ProQuest Will Provide Free Access to Six Databases for National Library Week
The countdown to National Library Week (in the U.S.) continues and we continue to share what some info industry companies are doing to celebrate. Today, we review what ProQuest is up to.
Here's the list of the databases that will be available for free beginning on Monday, April 12th.
1) ProQuest African American Heritage (try it out | learn more) is a groundbreaking resource that brings together records critical to African American family history research and connects users to a community of research experts.
2) ProQuest Historical Newspapers - Black Newspapers (try it out | learn more) for eye-witness accounts of history being made, start here. Search and browse continuous runs of the following full-image Historical Newspapers:
+ The Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988)
+ Chicago Defender (1910-1975)
+ Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005)
+ New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993)
3) CultureGrams (try it out | learn more) explore the world's cultures with local experts that document the history, customs, government, and daily life in multimedia reports on over 200 countries – from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
4) eLibrary (try it out | learn more) this easy to use resource brings together content about in-demand subjects from millions of multimedia-rich, global resources.
5) SIRS Discoverer (try it out | learn more) a safe, kid-friendly online research and discovery environment for young researchers from elementary to middle school.
6) SIRS Issues Researcher (try it out | learn more) learn the origins, pros and cons, global perspectives and the essential questions under debate for more than 300 of today's social issues.
Finally, this page offers info about ProQuest's library advocacy work as well as a colored poster (PDF) that you can download. It reads:
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
