Survey Response : "I Miss ProQuest!"

Recently we administered our annual library survey to gain feedback from students, faculty, and staff. After reading the responses, we've decided to write a short blog post that responds to the concerns and questions that were brought up, as well as talk about some of the decisions and changes we plan to make based on the results.

One item that was mentioned on the survey (and that has been mentioned several times to us in person) was the decision to drop ProQuest databases and subscribe to EBSCOhost databases. People have mentioned how much they miss ProQuest, and we definitely understand that! Although there is overlap in what we had and what we have now, there are some things that can no longer be accessed. In a perfect world, we would have both ProQuest and EBSCOhost products, but unless anyone has a rich uncle who wants to donate annually to our database subscriptions budget, we're unfortunately limited in what we can provide.

We dropped the ProQuest databases in October 2014 due to the ability to add more products (including our Discovery Service, which there will be a future blog posting about) for a comparable cost. At this time, there is no plan to switch back to ProQuest. However, we would love to hear feedback from those who lost specific resources after the changes were made. We can look to see if we have access to those resources in other databases. We can also borrow resources via Interlibrary Loan.

Another comment we have heard is that the EBSCOhost databases are more difficult to use and navigate than the ProQuest databases were. While they do have different search screens, there are many similarities. We offer research consultations to anyone who wants some search tips or ideas about how to maximize their results (contact us through the email link or phone number listed below).

We appreciate all of the feedback we receive about our resources, and I hope this helps clear up some questions that people have had. If you still have more concerns related to ProQuest, please contact us via email or phone (615-547-1299), and we will be glad to talk to you about those. Also, look for the next blog posting in our survey response series.