Bertha Smith Library

Learning to Use ProQuest

In this tutorial, you will learn . . .In this tutorial, you will learn . . .

What ProQuest is,

How to access ProQuest,,

How to quickly and efficiently search Proquest, andHow to read, e-mail, print, and download articles from ProQuestBeen through the tutorial before? Click the links to go directly to the corresponding

sections.

What is ProQuest?What is ProQuest?ProQuest is a fully searchable online information service that provides access to thousands of periodicals covering a wide variety of subjects to meet your research needs.

Several major databases are available through ProQuest including:

ABI/INFORM

AMA Titles

Hoover’s Company Records

National Newspaper Abstracts

ProQuest Dissertations and Thesis - Abstracts

ProQuest Religion

Research Library ProQuest Newspapers

Accessing ProQuestAccessing ProQuestThere are two ways to access ProQuest :

On Campus Online

1. Find any available Library or Computer Lab terminal,

2. Go to the desktop,3. Double-click the “ProQuest” icon.

1. Go to the LRS website2. Click “student-login”3. Type in your student ID and Password4. Go to “Library Online”5. Click the “ProQuest” link*6. Select language and click “login”

*You may have to hold CTRL while clicking if you have Internet Explorer Popup Blocker enabled

OR

1. Access the wireless internet on campus through your personal computer,

2. In the address bar of internet explorer, type in:http://proquest.umi.com/login

Searching ProQuestSearching ProQuestThere are several ways to search ProQuest

Basic Search

Advanced Search

Topical Search

Publication Search

Been through the tutorial before? Click the links to go directly to the corresponding sections.

Search type

Click a tab to select a search type. The highlighted tab tells you which mode you are currently in.

Search Box

Enter your search terms here

Databases to be Searched

Limits searches to a particular database

Dates to be searched

Limits searches to a particular range of dates

Basic Search

Basic Search

Document type

Limits search to specific type of document (book, news, editorial, letter, etc.)

Look for terms in

Citation and abstract (recommended)Limits search to bibliographic information and document summary

Citation and document textApplies search to full text of document

Author

Limits searches to a particular author

Publication title

Limits searches to a particular publication

Publication type

Limits search to specific type of publication (magazine, journal, dissertation, etc.)

Sort results by

Displays results by date or relevance to keyword

More Search Options

Click to display more search options

Basic Search

To run a basic search of the ProQuest databases, simply enter your search term(s) into the search box and click “Search”

Your results will appear in just a few moments.

Basic Search

Limit your search in several ways to narrow your results:

Select the database that is most likely to have the material you are searching for

Specify a range of dates to find information from a particular day, month, year, decade . . . You decide!

Limit your searches to full text articles only if you can’t afford to wait for an interlibrary loan or purchase order

Narrow your searches to scholarly journals for in-depth discussions of your topic

With all these search options, and more, it’s easy to find exactly what you need.

Advanced Search

Use the advanced search to narrow your results even more.

Enter your search term in the search box – “Martin Luther”

If you don’t want articles on Martin Luther King, Jr., change the AND operator to AND NOT

and enter the word “King” into the second line. This will find all articles with the words “Martin Luther” but without “King” in them

Also, change the document type to “Person” so that the name search will be more focused

Now enter “Theology” into the third line to limit search results to papers discussing Luther’s theology.

Finally, select a database to limit the results to scholarly journals to find professional research on the subject.

Then search for your results . . .

Basic and Advanced Search Tips

• Use specific terms: Entering the term “Paul” will yield thousands of articles on every subject imaginable. Try instead “Paul the Apostle” to bring up articles referring just to him.

• Combine terms with Boolean operators: Boolean operators are a great way to refine any search. Make sure you know how to use:

AND AND searches for the terms in the same paragraph (250 words)• environment AND cancer• Congress AND Iraq

OR Either the search words before or after OR can appear in the article• gold OR silver

AND NOT AND NOT finds articles containing the term before AND NOT, but not the terms after AND NOT

• surfing AND NOT internet• skiing AND NOT cross-country

W/# Searches for terms within the specified number of words from each other.• airport W/20 security• export W/50 Japan*

PRE/# The first search word must precede the second by the # of words to match• U.S. PRE/20 Economic Policy

• Add phrases: Combine key words with phrases to get information efficiently. Make sure to surround phrases with quotation marks if they are three words or longer. For example, to find articles on first amendment issues in the music industry, you might search:

“First Amendment rights” AND music industry

Basic and Advanced Search Tips

• Some words can be truncated to broaden a search to find more information on a subject. There are two truncation characters:

* The symbol * is used as a right-handed truncation character only; it will find all forms of a word.For example, searching for econom* will find "economy", "economics", economical", etc.

? The symbol ? is used to replace any single character, either inside the word or the right end of the word. ? cannot be used to begin a word. For example, searching for "wom?n" will find "woman" and “women.” Searching for “t?re” will find “tire”, “tyre”, “tore”, etc.

• Search terms can also be limited to certain tags. For example, you can search for articles authored by Bruce Ware by using the AU field as follows:

AU(Bruce Ware)AU(Ware, Bruce) yields the same results

There are dozens of tags available including company names (CO), document languages (TX), document title (TI), image caption (CP), etc. For a complete list of tags and their proper syntax, click the “Search Tips” hyperlink on the ProQuest search page.

• Target your database: instead of searching all databases, limit your search to those databases that will most likely contain the information you are looking for.

• Use date limits: if you know when an event occurred, or want information from a specific period, enter a date range to find articles published during that time period.

• Focus your search with the “More search options” feature. By limiting the data searched, you can tightly focus your search. For example, enter a Publication Title to limit your search to articles appearing in a specific publication.

Topical Search

If you aren’t sure exactly what keywords you need to use, try ProQuest’s topical search. It’s a great tool to find material on your research subject.

Just enter broad search term into the search box and click search. ProQuest will suggest similar topics to the term you entered.

For example, if we enter “theology” into the search box . . .

and click “Search,” then ProQuest will suggest a variety of related fields.

Topical Search

Click “View documents” to see all the articles related to the subject of theology.

Or, narrow the subject further by clicking “Narrow by topic.” If we want articles that relate specifically to Christian theology, we might click “Narrow” under “Theology AND Christianity.”

Now click “View Documents” to see what articles are available.

Narrow the search again by selecting another topic – try “History.”

Topical Search

You find 75 articles relating to Christian theology, history, and interpretation. That’s a good start for a paper on the history of Christian interpretation of the Bible!

Of course, you can narrow the search even more by continuing to click “Narrow by topic.”

Topical Search

You can also narrow your search using the Smart Search box above document list.

You can sort by Topic,

by Date,

or by Publication.

Simply click the link that describes how you want to narrow your search, and then see what documents are available.

Publication Search

If you have a particular publication in mind you want to search for, Publication Search lets you do just that.

Simply type the title in the search box, click “Search” and ProQuest will attempt to locate the requested publication.

You can also browse publication titles.

Simply click the first letter of the publication you are looking for and ProQuest will list all available titles in alphabetical order.

• Use "quotation marks" to search for an exact title match. If you search for Science you will find all publications with Science in the title. If you search for "Science" you will find only the publication titled Science.

• AND is assumed between each word. Do not enter AND. If you search for American AND medical, ProQuest will search for titles containing all three words.

• Searches are not case sensitive. A search for new york times will find the same results as a search for New York Times.

Accessing and working with Search Results

In this last section, we will deal with how to access the documents found in your searches and what you can do with them.

First, we’ll do a basic search on the foreknowledge of God. We only want full-text, recent, scholarly articles, so our search might look like this:

And our results like this:

Accessing and working with Search Results

Articles can be viewed in several formats, depending on your need.

To view the document in its entirety, click the title. If the full text is available, the complete article will come up as well.

Clicking “Full text”, if available, will give the same results

Some articles are only available in .PDF format (make sure you have Adobe Acrobat Reader)You can also view only an article’s citation or abstract

Accessing and working with Search Results

The document view screen is the primary way to access your article. All relevant information can be found here.

Here you can print or email the document. Make sure to use this function rather than your explorer’s functions to insure a proper layout!

Other view options are available here

Search for other articles by the same author or publication by clicking these links

The full text of the article, if available, begins here (including a word-count)

Topical and Publication Search Tips

• When doing a topical search, start with a broad topic word. If you are doing a study on the resurrection of Jesus, it doesn’t do any good to try to search “historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Just type in “Jesus Christ” or “Resurrection” and begin to narrow your search from there.

• Use filters on the topic page to limit your topics to people, subjects, companies, etc. to help narrow your focus.

• When searching for publications, partial title searches can be useful. Entering “New York”, for example, could yield New York Times, New York Post, etc.

• Use likely key words to be in the title, and truncate them if necessary. If you are interested in articles on history, type “history” in the search bar. Or, type “hist*” to find other words like “historicity” or “historical.”

• The only Boolean operator that works in the publication search is OR. AND is assumed, so if you type “God AND Theology,” ProQuest will attempt to find a title with all three words. Use your operators carefully!

• Quotation marks search an exact title match. Use them if you know right what you are looking for.

For further help . . .For further help . . .

Congratulations! You’ve completed the Congratulations! You’ve completed the Bertha Smith ProQuest Tutorial. If you Bertha Smith ProQuest Tutorial. If you have any further questions, you can:have any further questions, you can:

See the search tips section on the ProQuest See the search tips section on the ProQuest search page,search page,

See the See the Guide to Searching Library DatabasesGuide to Searching Library Databases at any of the on-campus computer terminals,at any of the on-campus computer terminals,

Request assistance from a Library staff assitant, Request assistance from a Library staff assitant, oror

Send questions to Send questions to library@lrs.edulibrary@lrs.edu or call 770- or call 770-484-1204 ext. 247.484-1204 ext. 247.

Happy searching!Happy searching!