Week 3 Newspapers and Maine Newstand
Sunday, October 14, 2012
These two resources, from the database supplier Proquest, give you and your patrons access to the full text of more than 500 U.S. and international news sources including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and the Times of London and hundreds of other news sources and news wires.
The Maine Newsstand is a special subset of the larger Proquest database that includes an index and full text coverage of five Maine newspapers:
- Bangor Daily News (12/92-present)
- Kennebec Journal (6/93-present)
- Lewiston Sun Journal (2006-present)
- Portland Press Herald (11/95-present)
- Central Maine Morning Sentinel (8/93-present)
Take a look at the homepage for Maine Newsstand. At the top, under the title, there are several options for looking for information. Basic search is the default. There is also advanced search which lets you enter more criteria to focus your research. You can also search just obituaries or a particular newspaper publication. Let’s talk about basic search first.
The basic search function works a little bit like Google or Yahoo search. Begin typing your keywords and a menu of choices will pop up. If one of the options fits what you’re looking for, choose it, otherwise, keep typing and when you finish, hit return.
Before searching, click the box beside “Full text documents only.” Your results will have full text in html, pdf or both. Use the Set Alert feature to have Proquest run searches for you and inform you when something new on your topic has been added. Email the search results or complete articles to yourself or someone else.
Advanced search allows you many more options up front for refining exactly what you’re looking for. You can search for words in different places in the documents, search date ranges, or for specific companies or people mentioned and several other options. All these options help you manage the number of articles that you will ultimately have to sort through.
Discovery Exercise
Create a blog posting discussing the following questions and other observations you have about Proquest. All resources can be accessed via this alphabetical list.
1.The first 3 minutes of the short tutorial “Maine Resources in Marvel” is about the Maine Newsstand.
2. Do a basic search on something of interest to you. Report your findings and observations.
3. 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.
4. 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.
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.
Explore posts in the same categories: Newspapers
MARVELous Maine Invitational 
October 18, 2012 at 1:30 am
What is the difference between the RSS feed and creating an Alert in Maine Newsstand? Thanks, Bunkie (Helen)
October 18, 2012 at 1:04 pm
According to Proquest help ” An RSS feed for your current search, or for a publication title, serves the same purpose as an alert, letting you know when new matching documents, or a new issue are available in ProQuest. However, an RSS feed gives you more flexibility of access. Instead of only being delivered by email, you can integrate your RSS feed into an RSS reader or into a Web page. When you create an RSS feed, ProQuest provides you with a link that you can add to an RSS reader or integrate into your own Web page or a Web page at your institution. Clicking the link at any time will display the most current matching search results, or the most current issue’s contents.”.
October 18, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Thank you! I actually am understanding all of this! Now, next question, why did I fail when I went to creat an alert…error message…on my end? I thought I was all set, I did all the steps…
Thanks, :), Bunkie
October 18, 2012 at 6:58 pm
I’m having the same trouble trying to set up an alert. I can only think that Proquest is actually having a problem today but I’ll forward this issue to Maine Infonet for them to pursue with the vendor.
October 19, 2012 at 12:57 pm
Thank you, I may go back and try setting up the RSS feed ..good experience for me, :). Thanks again for your help. Bunkie
October 20, 2012 at 3:39 pm
I also had trouble setting up an alert – error message. I am having difficulty posting comments to other participants as well – in particular, it seems to be a problem when I am trying to comment on blogs that are using blogspot (I am using wordpress).
October 21, 2012 at 6:33 pm
We have Maine Infonet working with Proquest to solve this problem. As soon as we get a resolution, we’ll post it.
October 22, 2012 at 7:54 pm
Can someone tell me how to search for images? I know there was an image in the Bangor Daily News and when I search the topic I find several articles but I don’t see any images. I would like to be able to limit by images or search images.
October 26, 2012 at 3:50 pm
I’ve spent considerable time trying to figure this out without success. The Proquest help says you can do a command line search (under Advanced search) for the field code MD (Media). When I did that, I got no results for the people I searched for. When I typed in a question mark, I got a whole list of articles, many of which had picture captions but no pictures. I’m thinking that Proquest doesn’t upload pictures. I did find some charts and graphs in a few articles but no pictures. If anyone knows differently, please let us know.
December 9, 2012 at 11:40 pm
I too had difficult setting up alerts. I have set up an RSS feed from a website I personally enjoy. I do find that one can easily become bogged down with too many alerts, emails, and feeds! They can become very time consuming.
However, if one is following a topic for research, or other reasons, it can be a great tool!