The Source: Talking about Books for Children (Magpies) describes itself on its About Page as “a subject guide to children's literature: books, short stories, traditional literature and poetry from around the world with an emphasis on Australian and New Zealand literature”. The information in the mostly bibliographic database – drawn from over 10,000 picture books, 14,500 poems, and over 2,000 short stories – is compiled by Dr Kerry White, Rayma Turton, and Trevor Agnew, all of whom have great experience in children's literature from multiple perspectives like academia, teaching, librarianship and bookselling.
The database consists of four sub‐databases: Books and Authors; Poetry; Short Stories; and Awards. Additionally, it includes support material documents listed in an index of downloadable files. Most of these support documents are teachers' notes to selected books. Users can search for subjects using the comprehensive subject index – broadly based on the Schools Catalogue Information Services (SCIS) headings – titles, either partial or full; genres (a completed annotated list is provided); reading ages; authors and illustrators; and series and sequences. The sub‐databases also have further refinements specific to each. The Books database can be searched by type of book, like an anthology or songbook. The Poetry database can be searched by first line. Any of the databases, apart from Awards, can have up to three genres searched at any one time, along with other parameters. Search guidance is given at the point of search: so instructions on how to search for an author is next to the author drop‐down box, and so on.
Although The Source is not hugely difficult to navigate, it does take time for the searcher to orientate, probably because each sub‐database is slightly different from the others, and they do not necessarily link together. For example, when the Australian poet and novelist Max Fatchen, is searched for in Books, some biographical detail and his books are listed. When he is searched for in Poetry, the same biographical detail is returned (which is good), but a list of 334 poems shown. Then again, the poems are cross‐indexed in the books, so the book titles are hyperlinked. So The Source is more of a hub, rather than a one‐stop search. For researchers interested in comprehensive searches, the decision to check each individual sub‐database is not an intuitive process.
While encouraged by a Poetry Week promotion, where The Source suggested on its entry page finding Australian poems by clicking on the Australian Poems genre in the Poetry section, the reality for this reviewer is that so many individual poems are indexed – as illustrated by the Max Fatchen example – that, without any further limiters, the search in the Poetry sub‐database will crash. This search was tried on three separate computers, using both internet Explorer and Firefox. However, add a limiter or two, and the search will work well. This seems to be the only genre search that crashes: more specific genres will easily return results.
The Source has much in common – both appearance and content‐wise – with the US Children's Comprehensive Literature Database (CLCD) (http://childrenslit.com) (RR 2011/072). Both are mostly bibliographic databases of children's literature, with some full text. The Source's full text is short stories and poems in the public domain. CLCD's full text is reviews from journals like Kirkus Reviews. The Source's strengths lie in its drill‐down detail, so the user can find references to specific short stories and individual poems. Both are excellent resources for Australian children's and young adult novelists, CLCD surprisingly so. A search for the young adult novelist Lili Wilkinson was conducted in both databases. While The Source returned her seven titles, CLCD returned four yet, given that Wilkinson is not as well known as, say, Shaun Tan, then her inclusion in CLCD is notable. This reviewer had not expected so much Australian content to be present in a North American database.
The Source is recommended for Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) libraries. School, public, and academic libraries training educators or with ANZ children's literature specialities, will find this database a good resource, as will primary and secondary school teachers and student teachers. Public libraries might find it useful also as a readers' advisory tool. If the library is not based in Australia or New Zealand – or does not specialise in ANZ children's literature – then the CLCD database has sufficient data about the Australian children's literature scene to be the preferred option. But within Australia? The Source is recommended, especially for its individual poem and short story indexing.
