Here are a couple good solutions for a multi-select droplist:
There are many ways you could “give them articles” based on their choices… Depends if you want to link to a separate page with those articles, or maybe just show widgets with article titles (and links) on the same page, etc. I think it would help forum users here if you could provide some more details about how you’d like this to work–details of the user experience or desired look and feel, etc.