Proquest

I recently held library classes to discuss the different types of propaganda for 7^th grade English, so this became my search topic.  As I typed in propaganda, other relevant search terms were listed below.  The term I ended up selecting was tv propaganda.  Proquest  presented 9784 results for my search.  This result page also included a box with suggested subjects related to my search.  Various tools are available such as email, print, cite, export/save and save to my research which are very useful for someone doing in depth research.  Each result showed the source (magazine or other) in bold print.  What I really liked was the ability to sort/narrow my results in the right side bar.  The basic sort was available by relevance and publication date (oldest first or recent first).  This side bar also allows me to narrow my results by; full text, peer reviewed, source type, publication title, document type, subject, classification, company/organization, location, person, tags, language, database, and publication date.  These fields have many subfields to select from.  I chose source type and selected magazines which then narrowed down the results to 3327.  I explored a few in the side bar and found I could easily narrow the results to publications/magazines that I was more familiar with as well as some from other countries.  I really liked narrowing the results by persons.  I have read Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin (a quick read but very captivating), a book I heavily recommend.  Stalin was a heavy user of propaganda and I was able to find 3 magazine results.  What a great tie in for the book! I strongly believe that students should be asked to explore/research subject matters beyond the book which can create a deeper understanding.

I found visiting other blogs helpful and an excellent way to find discoveries that I had missed!

I looked at all the publications that are available in Proquest and was amazed at the number.  I searched “library” and had 26 publication results.  Many of these I had never heard of before.  The School Library Journal is available in full text from Jan. 1996 up to the present issue. The journal is also available in other formats as early at Jan. 1988 to the present.   Looking at this list I see a couple of other journals I am interested in and may create an alert for those journals new to me.  I sent an article to my fellow middle school librarians about trends in the 21^st Century Library.  I set up an alert but first had to set up an account under My Research.  Once I did that, then creating an alert was very fast and easy.