Proquest Newspapers

Week III
First, I found the tutorial for Proquest very effective. The steps outlined were precise and helpful. Maybe there is something to doing tutorials rather than blindly going into something and wildly clicking away. My frustration level this week was very low.

I decided to take a gander at what the rest of the world's press is making of our pre-election frenzy. I wanted to read my old Argentine favorite, the Buenos Aires Herald, but it isn't one of the papers in the database. So, I decided to read El Pais from Madrid. At first I got a translated version of the latest paper, but I really wanted to read in Spanish. After digging around a bit, I discovered that "El Pais" is listed twice in the alphabetical listing, the second being the link to the Spanish edition. I read an article by Ignacio Sotelo. According to him the Euro Zone favors Obama and can't quite understand Romney nor his appeal. An interesting read. I did try to set up a feed for info through the election but got an error message. I'll try again later, as I saved my search, and figure this is a server problem.

I am really impressed with this resource. It will be particularly helpful in the summer months when visitors from away want to know why we don't have any daily papers on-hand for them. I will steer them to the PA comps and point them to a shortcut to Proquest. Every single person should be able to find at least one daily that will meet his/her needs.

I read a few of the other blogs. I think it is really terrific that all of us, regardless of level of tech savvy and previous experience with MARVEL, can participate in this community of learning. I also had occasion this week to steer two patrons to MARVEL, one for a question regarding long-term health insurance and another to NOVELIST. While we haven't covered those areas yet, I felt more confident in helping them because of the past three weeks of exploration.