By Isis Calderon

Are you feeling overwhelmed with your thesis writing? If so, don't worry, you're not alone. Writing a thesis can be an emotional rollercoaster, but there are resources available to make your journey smoother. Long gone are the days when students had to scour library shelves to find relevant books and articles for their research. The digital age has brought a wealth of information at our fingertips, and one of the most valuable resources available to researchers today is ProQuest Central.

NCCU’s Library provides a comprehensive training on this available resource for researchers, students, and faculty members who need to conduct research in a wide range of fields. The training aims to teach the importance of multidisciplinary resources in our libraries and to use this tool to locate diverse content types for use in research and teaching.

ProQuest Central is a subscription-based online database that provides access to a vast collection of academic journals, magazines, newspapers, dissertations, and other scholarly materials. Combining around 47 databases, the tool offers content from over 90,000 academic journals, more than 86,000 ebooks, over 6,000 newspapers, and hundreds of other sources, ProQuest Central offers a wealth of knowledge in multiple disciplines such as science, technology, engineering, social sciences, humanities, health, and more. The database also provides access to millions of full-text articles, as well as tools for citation management, data visualization, and other research tasks.

For those in the process of thesis writing, there is a valuable subset of the database called Dissertations & Theses. This database contains over 5 million dissertations and theses from universities and institutions around the world. Whether you're conducting a literature review or need to find primary sources of data to support your argument, you're sure to find what you need here. With over 2.7 million full-text dissertations and theses available, you can access unpublished research that might not be available anywhere else. This can help you stay ahead of the curve and get an edge in your research. Plus, with abstracts, indexes, and other metadata, you can easily search and discover relevant works.

Through the power of ProQuest Central, researchers can easily find and access relevant materials from various fields, which can be instrumental in achieving interdisciplinary insights and developing a comprehensive understanding of complex issues. The ability to access and analyze data from different disciplines is critical for students and researchers who are looking to make a meaningful impact in their fields.

ProQuest Central covers multiple disciplines and has partnered with top scholarly publishers such as Springer, ELSEVIER, Cambridge University Press, and others. The tool is also useful for staying up-to-date with the latest research in your field. You can set up alerts for specific search terms or topics, which notify you of new publications and research as soon as they become available. Moreover, the tool provides access to major newspapers, including those with paywalls, such as The WSJ, The New York Times, The Economist, and more. Additionally, there are 109 educational videos available, each with subtitles and providing relevant and authoritative observations and in-depth insights on popular current events in politics, business, finance, science, technology, and other aspects.

To start using ProQuest Central, follow these steps:

1. Access the ProQuest Central database through NCCU’s Library website.

2. Search for ProQuest Central in the database list.

3. Select Log In.

4. Log in with your NCCU Library credentials.

5. Start exploring the valuable resources available in ProQuest Central.

Here are some more tips to use the platform:

1. Perform a search:

Once you're in the database, use the search bar to enter your search terms. You can use keywords, phrases, or specific titles to find articles or publications relevant to your research.

2. Refine your search:

ProQuest Central provides multiple ways to refine your search results. You can use filters to narrow down your results by date, language, publication type, and more. You can also use the advanced search option to perform a more specific search, including Boolean operators and proximity searches.

3. Preview your results:

ProQuest Central will display your search results, along with brief summaries and other relevant information such as the author, publication title, and publication date. You can preview the articles to decide which ones are most relevant to your research.

4. Access the full text:

Once you've identified an article you want to read, click on the title to access the full text. ProQuest Central provides access to millions of full-text articles from academic journals, magazines, and newspapers, so you should be able to find what you need.

5. Cite your sources:

ProQuest Central provides citation information for each article, so you can easily cite your sources in your research papers or projects. You can also use citation management tools like Scribbr Citation Generator to keep track of your sources and format your citations correctly. 

6. Save and manage your research:

ProQuest Central allows you to save your search results, create alerts for specific search terms, and manage your research in a personal folder. You can also use tools like My Research to organize your sources and keep track of your progress.

ProQuest Central also provides tools for managing and organizing your research. You can export citations, annotate articles, and set up search alerts so you never miss a relevant publication. This can save you time and help you stay organized, so you can focus on what really matters - your research.

Multidisciplinary resources like ProQuest Central offer researchers and students unparalleled access to a wealth of knowledge across different disciplines. As such, they have become an essential tool for academic libraries and research institutions around the world. If you're feeling stuck or need some inspiration for your thesis, head to the Dissertations & Theses subset. It might just be the resource you need to take your thesis to the next level. By embracing the power of multidisciplinary resources, we can learn better, deepen our research, and have better insights. 

If you wish to access ProQuest training and introduction given by NCCU’s Library you can access it here: Chinese Version, English Version ProQuest Training.