ProQuest Adds Search Alerts, Deep Indexing, GPO Catalog

Following ProQuest's recent acquisition of the Dialog business database, the resource provider has announced a number of other additions and enhancements to its platform. First, ProQuest has followed suit in terms of user-centered feature implementation, adding custom RSS feeds that allow users to follow trends and updates in topics from beyond the standard ProQuest interface. This puts ProQuest among a number of companies seeking to close the gap between users' library resource-based research experience and the more general content resources they encounter on the open web from companies like Google and Yahoo.

In a similar vein, ProQuest has added deep indexing of 68 Emerald journals to its CSA Illustrata platform, allowing users to “identify hidden, relevant content in tables, figures, and other illustrations...and to link out to the articles in their library's electronic subscriptions.” The “surfacing” of this previously difficult-to-access content will aid in unifying users' search experience and bridge the gap between full-text indexing and ancillary materials accompanying the indexed articles.

Finally, ProQuest has added a digital archive of the Government Publishing Office's (GPO) Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (MoCat), the first online finding aid for the “vast published output of the U.S. Government” from 1895 to 1976. Previously available only in print, this searchable bibliography of pre-1976 documents from all three branches of government will “dramatically streamline research of historical documents from the American government,” which previously was a time-consuming and labor-intensive process requiring specific knowledge of GPO publishing and classification practices.