ER Challenge: Week 3

1. Basic search of multiple databases for topic "gulf oil spill" in quotes yielded 539 documents


Refining search to full-text = 339


same topic limited to last 7 days = 27


same topic, full-text, scholarly journals = 3


same topic, full-text, newspaper abstracts - 196





I liked the big square box right in front of the researcher, "List of Other Related Topics," really nice for students still trying to narrow their topic.





Advanced search, same topic in quotes and Texas, not Mississippi, not Florida, full-text, last 30 days = 2





A search of People magazine for the last 3 months, same topic, full-text, yielded 0 results because the most recent issue indexed is 3/10/10, weeks before the recent Gulf spill. Same search in Newsweek for the last 30 days showed 7 articles. Conclusion: Newsweek is better about getting indexed quickly than People. Duh, huh?





On the right, "Find More Documents Like This" is another handy tool for students who like to keep exploring and clicking away.





From a teacher's perspective, the citation capability looks really easy to use--quick and accurate.





2. One of the periodicals of which I was an avid fan in my former school librarian life was School Library Journal. A publication search for that title showed the magazines indexed back to 1988. Those oldest issues contained articles in abstract format only, not full-text as they are now. Archiving happens pretty quickly with SLJ: the June 2010 issue was indexed and showed 16 full-text articles that could be printed, linked to, cited, etc. So, if I wanted to explore articles in issues of SLJ I could do that and take a pass on the $100+ subscription cost. However, I really relied on the book reviews in SLJ (among other reviewing periodicals) and I don't see those included. Am I just not seeing them? Not digging deeply enough?





I don't think one can look for articles on a particular subject, say, "electronic databases," in a particular journal, right? One would have to do a general search of all publications using chosen limiters such as date ranges and/or type of database to search to find such info.





Again, "Find More Documents Like This" on the right is a handy tool for exploring.





I translated a SLJ document into Spanish--cool for foreign language teachers and their students. I don't understand a word of it, of course, but this would be a good cross-curricular activity and an opportunity for collaboration between librarians and foreign language teachers. I need to mention it to the appropriate personnel at the school here and will do that.





For someone who wanted to know when the next issue was available, the "Set Up Alert" feature with options for alert of abstract or of full-text release would be great. Or the RSS feed as well.