Facts On File, the award-winning publisher of reference materials for schools and libraries, has relaunched its Issues and Controversies in American History database, greatly augmenting its value for classroom use, homework assignments, and student research.

This major redesign and content enhancement significantly strengthens the database’s key objective—building a deep and balanced understanding of vital topics in American history. Issues and Controversies in American History features special, enhanced topic articles, each introduced by an original, three-minute video giving essential visual context to the issue or controversy covered by the article—and bringing history to life for the YouTube generation of visual learners. These enhanced articles include additional educator support material such as an overview of the topic, learning objectives, activity handouts, and self-assessment quizzes.

“The revamped Issues and Controversies in American History takes American history education to a whole new level,” said Mark McDonnell, president and CEO of Infobase Learning, parent company of Facts On File. “The enhanced lessons and new videos are powerful tools for getting students into the material in a fresh and deeper way that encourages critical thinking. And all educator resources are proprietary, created specifically for this database.”

Highlights of the Redesign:

• New, specially created educator support material—All articles covered by the database now contain original instructor materials such as discussion questions and academic standards correlations.
• Enhanced lessons with original video introductions—Select articles have been turned into enhanced lessons, each introduced by an exclusive, three-minute, iPad-friendly video that brings the issue to life in the context of its time and sparks in-class discussion. In addition, the enhanced lessons are supplemented with additional educator support material such as an overview of the topic, learning objectives, activity handouts, self-assessment quizzes, and more. Enhanced lessons cover core topics such as the Salem Witch Trials, Constitutional Convention, Secession of the Southern States, and Atomic Bombing of Japan, among many others.
• Improved navigation—Users have more convenient browsing options with the two new drop-down indexes. The new full subject index provides a thematic approach to issues across historical periods, and the new era index groups the topics by historical period.
• Enhanced search technologies—Search improvements include a helpful new Search Assist feature for quick access to key information, the ability to search all lessons by educational standards, an improved advanced search that allows users to limit search results by subject and era, and enhanced search results.
• Curriculum standards correlations—Users can easily find appropriate educational material tied to Common Core, state, and national standards.
• Special features—Three rotating articles on the home page highlight a different topic each month.
• New dynamic citations—Dynamic citations in MLA and Chicago Manual of Style formats.

The enhanced content and new features add to the primary source documents, timelines, background articles, biographies, bibliographies and Web sites, encyclopedia content, and other rich material that have made this acclaimed database so widely used.