TCA Letters to the Editor
Press Release
Title: Correction for ProQuest Central review
Date: January 2012
Organization: Boise State University
Letter:
Letter to the editor
I owe a big apology to ProQuest for an error in my recent review of ProQuest Central. I unintentionally made an inequitable comparison of search results between ProQuest Central and EBSCO Academic Search Premier. When searching the phrase "United States energy policy," the ProQuest Central results were displaying by date, while the EBSCO Academic Search Premier results were sorted by relevancy. ProQuest allows subscribing libraries to select a date or relevance sort and highly recommends relevance. With this error corrected, the ProQuest Central results were equally as relevant as those generated by EBSCO Academic Search Premier. In fact, the ProQuest results were superior for my needs (working with graduate students in public policy), in that there were more academic journal articles, from a broader range of subject areas listed in the first page of results. Given this correction, I would upgrade my rating for "interface/searchability" to 4.5 stars (from three), for a total score of 3.6 (from 3.25).
Ellie Dworak
Reference Services Coordinator
Liaison to Military Science, Political Science & Public Policy and Administration
Boise State University, Albertsons Library
208-426-1623 | elliedworak@boisestate.edu | http://works.bepress.com/ellie_dworak/
