Features Found in Most Periodical Indexes
Keyword Searching
A “keyword” search finds all occurrences of a particular word in a title, subject heading, abstract/summary, or author name. This is useful when you are not sure of the correct subject term and just want to find some articles on your topic.
Subject Searching
Like library catalogs described previously, most periodical indexes employ a structured vocabulary of subject headings (sometimes known as a “thesaurus”) in order to gather all similar articles together, thus reducing the need for trying different keyword variants. Many employ a
thesaurus designed for the topic area covered by the database, enabling the researcher to perform very accurate searches. It is often possible to “browse” the alphabetical listing of subject headings in the thesaurus in order to select the term that best reflects your particular topic.
Field Searching
Field searching lets you target a search within a particular segment of the description of the article. For example, you could look for the words “niche marketing” in only the article title field. This is often a good way of retrieving the most relevant articles or of restricting your search when you get too many irrelevant “hits.”
Truncation and Wildcards
This feature lets the searcher look for variations of words using only the word stem. For example, “advertis*” retrieves advertisement, advertising, advertiser, etc. Each database uses its own truncation symbols, and some have different ways of searching for one letter (useful for plurals) versus searching for unlimited additional letters. Some will also permit a wildcard character to be embedded within a word to be searched.
Boolean Combinations
The Boolean logic operators, AND, OR, NOT, allow the searcher to combine or exclude more than one word or phrase in a precise manner. Unlike many Web search engines, most structured databases are designed so that a two-word search is always executed as if the two words are next to each other, in the exact order as typed unless the searcher has joined them with AND or OR. Note the difference between these searches: “sports marketing” (no Boolean operator; searches as a phrase); “sports AND marketing” (retrieves articles that have both words in them); “sports OR marketing” (retrieves articles with either term or both).
The first search would retrieve the fewest articles, probably those most relevant to sports marketing. The second would retrieve only articles that include both words, but not necessarily near each other; the third would retrieve all articles that include either the word sports or the word marketing, a result that would probably be neither manageable nor relevant. On the other hand, OR is useful when you want to include similar concepts or synonyms: for example, “game or toy.”
Publication Searches
Periodical databases always include a list of the publications that are indexed. In a full-text database, this list can be used to retrieve a known article using the journal title, volume number, page, and date information,
as with a citation from a bibliography or reading list
Keyword Searching
A “keyword” search finds all occurrences of a particular word in a title, subject heading, abstract/summary, or author name. This is useful when you are not sure of the correct subject term and just want to find some articles on your topic.
Subject Searching
Like library catalogs described previously, most periodical indexes employ a structured vocabulary of subject headings (sometimes known as a “thesaurus”) in order to gather all similar articles together, thus reducing the need for trying different keyword variants. Many employ a
thesaurus designed for the topic area covered by the database, enabling the researcher to perform very accurate searches. It is often possible to “browse” the alphabetical listing of subject headings in the thesaurus in order to select the term that best reflects your particular topic.
Field Searching
Field searching lets you target a search within a particular segment of the description of the article. For example, you could look for the words “niche marketing” in only the article title field. This is often a good way of retrieving the most relevant articles or of restricting your search when you get too many irrelevant “hits.”
Truncation and Wildcards
This feature lets the searcher look for variations of words using only the word stem. For example, “advertis*” retrieves advertisement, advertising, advertiser, etc. Each database uses its own truncation symbols, and some have different ways of searching for one letter (useful for plurals) versus searching for unlimited additional letters. Some will also permit a wildcard character to be embedded within a word to be searched.
Boolean Combinations
The Boolean logic operators, AND, OR, NOT, allow the searcher to combine or exclude more than one word or phrase in a precise manner. Unlike many Web search engines, most structured databases are designed so that a two-word search is always executed as if the two words are next to each other, in the exact order as typed unless the searcher has joined them with AND or OR. Note the difference between these searches: “sports marketing” (no Boolean operator; searches as a phrase); “sports AND marketing” (retrieves articles that have both words in them); “sports OR marketing” (retrieves articles with either term or both).
The first search would retrieve the fewest articles, probably those most relevant to sports marketing. The second would retrieve only articles that include both words, but not necessarily near each other; the third would retrieve all articles that include either the word sports or the word marketing, a result that would probably be neither manageable nor relevant. On the other hand, OR is useful when you want to include similar concepts or synonyms: for example, “game or toy.”
Publication Searches
Periodical databases always include a list of the publications that are indexed. In a full-text database, this list can be used to retrieve a known article using the journal title, volume number, page, and date information,
as with a citation from a bibliography or reading list
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