ProQuest

To begin tracking down the "clues" in ProQuest, I searched for "school library standards." This brought up over 700 documents, so I clicked on Standards AND School Libraries in the Results box and narrowed it down to just 22 documents. The second title "Sticky Standards" caught my eye. At this point I had a plethora of options. I could translate the article to another language, print it, e-mail it, copy the link, cite it, or mark it. I could read just the abstract or go to the full text. Once in full text I could choose to follow the subject links, the author link, or even go to the complete issue of the publication. I selected mark it and then went to the folder entitled My Research which gave me another list of choices. The one I found most useful was Create Your Bibliography. Selecting MLA from the seven styles offered I next went to download which gave further directions and a list of instructions about MLA style in general. Both older students and adults will find this feature valuable and time-saving when working on research projects. You can e-mail up to 50 documents with a bibliography. Under My Research it even tracked all of my recent searches and offered the option to Set Up Alert and/or Create RSS Feed. But once you close out of ProQuest, My Research is cleared. I should be using this when I'm creating resource lists for trainings and conferences – it's elementary, my dear librarians!

On to searching by the title of a publication… using the keyword "school library" I found School Library Journal and School Library Monthly. Searching just the word "library" brought up 24 results. Selecting Library Media Connection I then searched the publication for "reading." Although this is a broad term it came up with just 253 documents. Full text is not offered for this publication, but an abstract is available and clicking on Find Text for the article "Free Reading is UTOPIA" took me to EBSCO sources that had full text and Holding Information for ILL use. I am definitely tracking down "Weed 'Em and Reap: the Art of Weeding to Avoid Criticism." I set up an alert for this topic in this magazine which will last for two months and then I'll be notified via e-mail if I'd like to continue the alert. It's interesting that the alert notes that this service is for individuals age 13 and older. Overall, ProQuest is a very serious looking resource – I think most kids under 13 wouldn't be interested in it – there's a wealth of information, but even SIRS is more fun to use.