Week 3: ProQuest

1. I like the format of this online database. It has even helped students that hit a dead end on research papers to come up with different subtopics. I like how you can put in a broad term and ProQuest offers ways to focus/narrow the search. For example, I did an initial search on "bullying". ProQuest came up with 4,441 articles, and suggested I narrow the topic by the following subtopics: Bullying and Children and Youth, Bullying and School Violence, Bullying and School Discipline, Bullying and Students, Bullying and Behavior, Bullying and work environment. I then chose Bullying and School Violence (201 articles), and it offered to narrow my topic further with: School Discipline, Children and Youth, Student Behavior, Students, Studies, Nonfiction, School Safety, Secondary Students. When I chose School Discipline, ProQuest narrowed my search to 29 articles. When I chose School Safety, 4 articles were left.

I never noticed the date range before. Our English teachers and students will appreciate this option as they have parameters on acceptable dates of data.


2. The Publications Tab will provide a nice visual when introducing this database to English classes or reviewing its potential with them. Rather than just saying that ProQuest has 1,700+ magazines/journals and newspapers, it will be nice to actually go into the list of publications and scroll down to show the data bank.

I typed in "Library" and it came up with 24 matches. I went into Young Adult Library Services. I went into the Spring 2010 edition and it gave me ways to narrow my topic as well. Neat! What I saw was a feast for the eyes. There was an article on "Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults: It's All About the Popular". We've been trying to come up with different ways to display the books besides the obvious: mysteries, science fiction, etc. I need to look more into the PPYA themed lists. This could save us a lot of time, and give us a foundation to build on.

Another article that caught my eye was "YALSA Announces 2010 Literary Award Winners and Selected Booklists." 2010's PPYA themes were listed there:

• Bodies: They come in all shapes, sizes and abilities... love it, or hate it, you only have one body.
• Change your world
• Hard Knock Life
• Twist on Tales