Discovery Exercise
Create a blog posting discussing the following questions and other observations you have about Proquest. All resources can be accessed via this alphabetical list.
1. Do a basic search on something of interest to you. Report your findings and observations.
1) searched for ebooks 4243 results
2) searched for ebooks for children 756 results
I read several articles and then sorted for publication date because I noticed that several articles were quite old-2001 for instance. I think this helped me to find more relevant information for my purposes.
1.a. See what your Challenge cohort is discovering. Choose at least one other Challenge blog, read that person's post (about this or a previous lesson), and comment on it. You may like to check each other's blogs throughout the Challenge as you learn together.
I read several different blogs and the first one turned out to be a co-worker. I hadn't even realized that they were taking this course. I left a comment for them.
2. Click the Publications tab at the top of the page. You will see an alphabetical list of the periodicals indexed in Proquest and the years included. Notice that this list is "Full text only." Do a search for a journal in your profession by typing a title or keyword in the search box. Report your findings and observations.
Used title search.
I searched for elementary school library media specialist periodicals-none.
I searched for school library media specialist periodicals-none.
I searched for library media specialist periodicals-none.
Then I changed to summary followed by publication summary, each produced some of the same results but also different periodicals. So I should try each limiter. I also noticed that I should be less specific to see what is available before limiting to exactly what I want or I might miss some things that I can use.
A strategy to remember is go from broad to narrow when searching.
I also noticed that the periodical issues are delayed one year. That seems fair, but next year our periodical budget will be eliminated so our patrons will not really have the most recent issues available to them.
Hi, Marilyn, you made the most important discovery of all when you learned that it's best to go from broad to narrow! That is good to apply in all searching cases. If you search publications for "library" and "libraries," you will get a host of relevant results, including School Library Journal. Only some of the journals are delayed, so don't give up hope! In your response to #1, I agree that sorting by date is more effective, but I suppose that depends on what you are searching for. Thanks for your comments.
ReplyDelete