Week 3 - Newspapers and Maine Newstand

This week we are exploring newspapers and the Maine Newsstand, resources that I haven't used a whole lot in MARVEL.  I have a subscription to the New York Times online, so I use that as my primary newspaper resource personally and because I work in a K-5 school library, the need for these resources is fairly limited.  I'm hoping that this exploration will help me find ways to use Maine Newsstand with my students.

1. Do a basic search on something of interest to you. Report your findings and observations.
I did my basic search using the search term "Red Sox."  I read just about everything published about the Red Sox, so I was interested to see if Proquest could find something I hadn't seen.   I got 680,610 hits, more than I could manage, obviously.  So I began limited my search, first by sorting the results so that the most recent appeared first, and then by limiting the results to those in this decade.  That was still too much (98,000 hits), so I limited things once again by choosing one of the suggested subject headings.

The first article that came up was one in the Belfast Telegraph (as in Belfast, Ireland, not Belfast, Maine) which was interesting to me because it provided a different perspective on Red Sox ownership (the owners of the Red Sox also own a soccer team in the UK).  There were also more than 20 hits dated today, which obviously indicates how up to date Proquest is.

Although using this database to get news does not feel as "fun" as using my NYTimes mobile app, it is clearly better for finding specific information.  If I want to browse the news I'll stick with my app, but if I (or my patrons) need targeted information, Proquest is the way to go.

 2. Save this search to perform again or create an alert which will let you know when something new is added that fits your search criteria.

The "save search" feature is handy for projects that might involve several different information-gathering sessions and/or the use of different devices.  The alert is great as well if you want to stay on top of a particular subject, especially one that might not be on the front pages of the news. 


3. See what your Invitational cohort is discovering. Choose at least one other Invitational blog, read that person’s post (about this or a previous lesson), and comment on it. You may like to check each others blogs throughout the Invitational as you learn together.

I posted a comment on RSU2's blog site (http://marvelouskidsrsu2.wordpress.com/):

I too felt a certain responsibility to learn more about Proquest and a hope that I would find a resource that I could use more consistently in my school library.  You picked a much more scholarly subject than I agree that your results sound somewhat disappointing.  As you mention, it's hard to imagine a student navigating through the many steps that you went through.  I guess our work is in order in terms of modeling, scaffolding and practicing!

Thanks for a great post!

4. This is Maine Library Snapshot Week which makes it the perfect opportunity to report how many patrons/users/members you have helped find the information they need using this or any other MARVEL resource.  Blog about an experience you had showing a patron how to use MARVEL.

I generally start teaching students how to access MARVEL in 3rd grade.  We use KidsSearch and Searchasaurus as introductions to the database.  In 4th and 5th grade I expand instruction to Britannica and Student Research Center.  I find that students become more comfortable with the databases as they get older, but the functions are fairly intuitive and for the most part user-friendly.  I always make a point to preface my MARVEL lessons with a Google search so we can compare and contrast (and my goal is that every student leaving my school knows that Google is not the place to start on a research project).  It definitely takes practice and repeated exposure, but I find MARVEL to be a great tool to use with my patrons!