The South Dakota Library Challenge: Electronic Resources Edition was developed by the South Dakota State Library staff to introduce you to the statewide subscription electronic resources. The Electronic Resources Challenge encourages library staff to learn more about the resources that provide expanded access to information and research tools to all schools, libraries and citizens of South Dakota. It is your chance to Explore...Discover...Play!...and Learn about the statewide subscription resources and how they can be useful to you both personally and in your library. This is an opportunity for you to learn at a pace that is comfortable for you and to share your learning experience with your colleagues in the South Dakota library community.

For more information about the Electronic Resources Challenge, check out our FAQ and Getting Started Pages. Please contact us if you have any questions.



Sunday, November 15, 2015

Institute Edition: Lesson 6--ProQuest

Dr. Oz just mentioned a rare medical condition. Where can I find out more about it?

 A high school student is doing a project on the Harlem Renaissance. Where can the student find good, scholarly information?

 My supervisor wants me to learn more about the latest trend in the field. Where can I look?

 The answer? ProQuest! ProQuest Research and Discovery Library delivers full-text journal articles from scholarly publications, trade journals, and popular magazines. Titles range from Agricultural Research to Reading Research Quarterly to Good Housekeeping. It also contains Library Journal and School Library Journal in full text. ProQuest brings you feature articles, book and movie reviews, editorials and more. The State Library's subscription also provides newspaper indexes to three national newspapers.

 Before searching, click the box beside "Full text." Your results will have full text in html, pdf or both. Use the "Create Alert" feature to have ProQuest run searches for you and inform you when something new on your topic has been added. Email search results or complete articles to yourself or someone else.

 For more information about the features, see this State Library two-page tutorial, or this ProQuest YouTube tutorial that describes basic search.

 Discovery Exercise assignment for Institute participants, please choose, explore and report on both questions under Basic and 1 question under Advanced. Email your responses to Jane Healy. Please put CHALLENGE--LESSON (and the lesson number) in your subject line. Please put the question number before your response.

Basic Discovery Exercise
Discuss and report answers to 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.

 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.

 Advanced Discovery Exercise:

 1. Your patron or student is interested in literary criticism of Victor Hugo’s novel, Les Miserables. She is NOT interested in anything about the musical theater or movie versions. Click the “Full text” box, and type the novel title in the search box. Use the “Document Type” and “Subject” limiters on the right sidebar of the results page to exclude reviews, musical theater, etc., so that you get only results about the novel. Explain your process and results.

 2. You and your colleagues are curious about the ways libraries aided their communities during and after Hurricane Sandy. What is the date and content of the most recent information on that topic? Explain how you did your search.
Posted by at