ProQuest

I had no idea that this was available through the databases. The number of scholarly journals and magazines is quite amazing! I left my computer unattended during my research session because I needed to go pick up my kids from school, and when I returned my session had timed out. I got a different screen than the startup one I used through SDLN. When I tried to reaccess the database it didn't work and I had to go back to the home page for SDLN. In my trying to access adventures, I brought up a list of universities that subscribe to Proquest (many of the CA universities do) and was very impressed that we had database access equal to many of the high powered universities.

In my research, I did a search on Roman archaeology and then refined it to the archaeology of Pompeii. The results were staggering. There were many, many articles from many diverse publications, from many years. I liked the ones where the full text was included. On a couple of the ones with just a listing I tried to link to the SDSL holdings and every time I got a "server error". If you really needed those articles it would be a pain to get an error message - quite frustrating. Perhaps I was doing something wrong? However, the sheer number of sources made up for the error message - you could probably just use another source.

In accessing the publications tab, I searched for "library" and again got hundreds of results. There was everything from Current Awareness Abstracts of Library and Information Management, to Tech Library, Library Journal, and School Library Journal, and on and on and on. I delved into a couple of them to see what the listing looked like. You needed to select a year and an issue. I looked into a couple of the tech ones and was kind of overwhelmed with the level of the writing. Then I went to the School Library Journal and that was very fun! I read a neat article about ereaders. Then I read one about What Teens are Really Reading. That article had an awesome top 20 list of good series and good books that are "flying off the shelves" in libraries. Since we are looking to build our teen section it was particularly interesting to me. Very useful! I spent way longer than I had planned just cruising through the articles. Pretty fun and a fabulous resource!

To finish up I selected a couple fellow challenge bloggers to review. I picked clueless and hopeless hoping that these two were more my peers in experience. I must say that even though we had similar information in our blogs, both of theirs were much more attractively presented (with cool graphics and pictures I might add). I definitely felt out of my league in the blogosphere. Somewhere life has passed me by! I feel lucky just to get this darn thing posted correctly, never mind adding nifty pictures.