Enclosed is this month's free newsletter for ProQuest® Platinum subscribers. This newsletter is designed to help teachers, librarians, and administrators stay informed about the latest changes to their subscriptions, while providing classroom resources and giving tips for using their ProQuest solutions in a variety of settings.
Don't miss our online archive for access to past issues, and to make changes to your newsletter options.
PROQUEST EDUCATION SOLUTION UPDATES
Our product development team is constantly reviewing customer feedback and making changes to our learning resources to meet your needs. Several updates or content additions were recently completed, and we wanted to bring them to your attention.
One-click linking to your full-text content w/One-Click
Students, educators, and librarians want full text, fast. They don't know or care which of your resources it comes from –- as long as a single click takes them there. The challenge lies in screening the links and showing only those for which your collection can provide the full text.
As always, ProQuest is first with the solution -- One Click searching. This innovation (accessible within the new ProQuest Resource Linking feature) eliminates the frustration of multiple and/or dead-end links -– something serious researchers often complain about.
Here's how we did it. First we built a direct path between search results and full text. We systematically validate links from our award-winning abstracting and indexing to the full text in your electronic holdings. When users enter their search terms, the interface first identifies relevant results. It determines whether your ProQuest databases provide full text for each item, and then it determines whether your other electronic resources provide access to the full text.
If your holdings do include it, this is clearly marked on the Search Results screen and actively linked to the full text, no matter where it resides in your library's electronic collection. With a single click, users get exactly what they want. Eliminated are the blind links that may or may not resolve to full text.
This new service provides links to your popular databases at no additional cost. Also, if you're a Serials Solutions customer, you receive links to all your resources at no extra cost.
Don't miss this important new feature. You'll need to enable one-click linking from your LAD account, and then select the products you own from a pre-set list. These are the databases that we recognize as part of our one-click linking resources.
For additional information, read our resource flyer, or call us at 1-800-521-0600, EXT. 7113.
ProQuest Training Demos: Menus & More
Our entire collection of training demonstrations are now sporting easy-to-use menus, as well as updated content!
To tap into our Flash demos and learn more about all of our ProQuest solutions anytime, anywhere, just access the Training & Support section of our K-12 website, and click on Recorded Training. You'll be learning and exploring your subscriptions in no time.
February is Library Lovers Month. This is an excellent time for librarians and teachers to emphasize the love of reading many of the great books that are in the school library for fun, not just for an assignment.
This is especially motivating if the collection includes books that are on the most-popular list and those that have been made into movies. Students will need to do some research on which books are most popular today, both fiction and non-fiction.
Activity: Platinum provides many resources to use to research popular books and also to review movies based on these books.
Click the Topics tab.
Type "best selling books and novels" in the Search box and Search.
Click "Books AND Ratings & rankings" > View documents.
Open a document about best sellers that includes both fiction and non-fiction.
Select a fiction and non-fiction title of interest.
Use Basic Search to research each title selected (put titles in quotes).
Find out from the article whether or not the book has been made into a movie.
Type "Motion pictures AND Books" into the Basic Search.
Students should present an oral report of about two minutes about the book(s) they would like to read and movies (if applicable) that they would like to see and the reasons why. These reasons can include:
Related to what I am studying in school now.
Related to my ethnic or family history.
Related to a sport, hobby, or special interest that I have.
Looking for a fresh, up-to-date solution to power your social sciences, geography, or cultural studies curriculum? As always, our CultureGrams line is here to help.
And last week, our editors were proud to launch a new product -- Provinces Edition -- with reports on all 13 of Canada's provinces and territories.
Provinces Edition is ideal for upper elementary and middle school students studying Canada. Each province's report contains fascinating information on categories such as Geography; Wildlife; Environmental Issues; History; Population; Cultural Notes; and First Nations, Métis, and Aboriginal Peoples.
Each report includes maps, charts, a history timeline, and useful images, such as photos of the province's official emblems. Plus, statistical tables allow students to compare basic information on all of the provinces.
Find out more about CultureGrams at our K-12 website, or sign up for a free trial today.
CultureGrams can help you broaden your students' understanding of the world and its peoples. The World Edition includes 190+ country profiles, written for junior high students and older. CultureGrams also has a Kids Edition, Provinces Edition, and a States Edition, geared for upper elementary students. These editions include kid-friendly profiles of 70+ countries, all 50 states (including Washington, D.C.), and the Canadian provinces.
CultureGrams goes beyond mere facts and figures to deliver an insider's perspective on daily life and culture, including the history, customs, and lifestyles of the world's people.
Capital: San José
Population: 4,016,173 (rank=122)
Area, sq. mi.: 19,730 (rank=125)
Area, sq. km.: 51,100
Real GDP per capita: $9,606
Adult literacy rate: 96% (male); 96% (female)
Infant mortality rate: 8 per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 76 (male); 81 (female)
Did You Know?
More than 11 percent of Costa Rica's territory is reserved for national parks.
Costa Ricans call themselves ticos and are known by that name throughout Central America.
Costa Rica is one of the largest banana producers in the world.
Population
The majority of people (87 percent) have a European heritage. About 7 percent are of mixed heritage (European and indigenous), although many of these are immigrants from other Latin American countries. Three percent of the population is black and lives mostly on the Atlantic Coast. These people are descendants of laborers brought from the Caribbean to build a railroad. They later worked on banana plantations and developed a distinct culture in the region around Puerto Limón.
Religion
The Roman Catholic Church claims membership of about 80 percent of the population. Until the mid-1980s, it was the nation's official church, but it lost that status when the government decreed that a democratic nation should not support any particular religion. Although the Catholic Church continues to be very influential, the constitution guarantees religious freedom to the people. As is the trend elsewhere, secularization in Costa Rica is leading some people away from organized religion. At the same time, a growing number of religious people are joining other Christian churches, and religion still plays an important role in society.
General Attitudes
Costa Rica is a land of courtesy, domestic enterprise, hospitality, and gentleness. Militarism is despised by nearly all. Children are taught in school that armies are created to oppress rather than protect people. Aggressiveness, brusqueness, and violence are also shunned. Ticos say they are lovers of peace and conciliation. They avoid confrontation when possible; they may even say they will do something when they really don't intend to do it, just so they won't have to disagree.
The Arts
Dancing is a favorite activity among ticos of all ages. Typical Latin dances such as salsa, merengue, and cumbia, as well as the Costa Rican swing, are popular. Folk dances include the national dance, the Punto Guanacaste, the cambute, and maypole dances. Typical musical instruments include the chirimía (oboe), guitar, xylophone, accordion, and quijongo (a stringed instrument). People enjoy soca (a mixture of soul music from the United States and calypso music), calypso, reggae, and other music popular throughout the Caribbean, Central America, and North America.
To find out more about CultureGrams, connect to our website today.
Each month, our SIRS® WebSelect and SIRS® Discoverer WebFind editorial teams scour the Internet for top-quality sites that help teachers teach and students learn. Although no Internet site can supplant a quality research database, these vetted resources offer unique resources that are sure to be of interest.
This site aimed at teenagers offers personal stories and suggests strategies for coping with mental health disorders. Visitors may take part in polls, learn about personal strengths and how to deal with emotions, find facts about anxiety disorders, and question experts.
The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library has collections of over 5,000 texts available to the public. "This [particular] collection contains fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, letters, newspapers, manuscripts and illustrations from 1500 to the present, arranged for browsing by author's last name or by category of interest." (UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA) Categories include texts by African Americans, Native Americans, Women Writers, and more.
Social Explorer
Organization: Queens College, City University of New York
"Social Explorer is dedicated to providing easy access to demographic information for United States. We have hundreds of interactive data maps of the United States, including historical data back to 1940. Social Explorer is under continuous development. Our goal is to provide complete historical census." (QUEENS COLLEGE)
Our ProQuest product trainers are standing by to help you get the most out of your subscription--and learn more about our other digital learning resources! We offer a wide variety of online training sessions each month.
Plus, all attendees can easily obtain a Certificate of Attendance (right) for any of our online courses! The certificate documents the course name, amount of class time, date, and verifies attendance. You can use the certificate to document attendance in the class and submit it along with the additional documentation your school district requires to award you with continuing education credits.
Be sure to tell your trainer that you would like to receive a certificate via email at the start of each class. They’ll be glad to help!
You can download three ready-to-print versions of forthcoming training dates and times in PDF format.
Our training sessions cover after-school hours within several time zones. Best of all, there's no cost to participate. All you need is a computer with Internet access, a phone, and one hour.
What features of Platinum do you and your students find the most useful? Have you recently used or are planning to use it as part of an assignment or student research project? How do you and other curriculum leaders in your institution use your ProQuest educational resources?
Share your experiences with peers working in schools across the country and around the world--through an upcoming Product News Bulletin! We're waiting to hear from you. Please send your ideas and stories to: tim.mclain@il.proquest.com
If we choose your submission, we'll contact you for additional information and permission to use your story in a future issue.
FORWARD TO A COLLEAGUE + EMAIL SERVICE INFORMATION
Increase the usage of your digital learning resources! Our forward-to-a-friend service makes it easy to instantly send this product bulletin -- and all the great ideas and information it contains -- to others in your subscribing institution with a click of your mouse.
Also, be sure to encourage them to sign up for our SIRS, CultureGrams, ProQuest, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, eLibrary, eLibrary Curriculum Edition, and additional enewsletters as appropriate.
To change your email address, sign up for additional newsletter titles, or modify your subscription settings, click here.
ProQuest offers a growing family of K-12 classroom-focused,
subscription-based online research tools. Many of these education solutions offer reading level-linked
(lexile) content, support
21st-century information
literacy skills, and help schools differentiate instruction across all curriculum areas.
Learn more about all of our tools here, tap into our training resources and videos, and don't miss our new eLibrary research tool (more). We also have a pair of special resource pages just for teachers (with lesson plans) and librarians.
February is Library Lovers Month. This is an excellent time for librarians and teachers to emphasize the love of reading many of the great books that are in the school library for fun, not just for an assignment.
