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Database Searching Tips

Library Catalog	BLC Virtual Catalog	ABC-Clio	CSA	Dissertations	FirstSearch
InfoTrac	LexisNexis	Ovid	ProQuest	RLG-Eureka	Web of Knowledge
WebSPIRS

The Library Catalog

Using truncation and wildcards to account for variant spellings

*	replaces up to five characters in the specified position in the word. Use two asterisks (**) to match any number of characters.
?	replaces one character in the specified position in the word.

Using operators to expand and narrow your search

Operators can only be used in keyword searches.

AND	both terms must appear in your results. Use it to narrow searches, e.g., hawks and breeding.
OR	either term must appear in your results. Use it to expand searches, e.g., dogs or canines.
AND NOT	excludes records with the specified term, e.g., foundations and not charitable. Be careful when using AND NOT because the word you are excluding may occur in the record in a context unrelated to your search, especially if it is a common word.
BEFORE or AFTER	specifies that words or phrases appear in a particular order in the record, e.g., chester before arthur. Any number of words can appear between the specified words or phrases.
NEAR	specifies that words or phrases appear within ten words of each other in the same indexed field. For example, fractal near geometry will only retrieve records that contain both fractal and geometry within ten words of one another in the same field.
WITHIN	similar to the NEAR operator, but specifies the maximum number of words that may appear between the specified words. For example, fractal within 3 geometry will only retrieve records that contain both fractal and geometry within three words of one another in the same field.

To insure that your search statement is interpreted the way you intended, always use parentheses to indicate the logical structure of your statement if you use more than one operator. E.g., (canines or dogs) and (vaccinations or health)

Limiting results

Types of limits available: material type, date of publication, language, and location (a particular Tufts library) can be used with all searches.

Saving your search strategy and/or results

You can e-mail the search results to yourself.

Document delivery

Document delivery is not available within the library catalog. Complete the document delivery form.

The Boston Library Consortium Virtual Catalog

The Boston Library Consortium Virtual Catalog is a collaboration of several BLC member libraries. Search it to identify books that are held at any of the libraries, and request items that are unavailable at any Tufts library.

ABC-CLIO

ABC-CLIO includes Historical Abstracts (periodicals covered) and America: History and Life (periodicals covered)
It allows for both basic and advanced searching.

Using truncation and wildcards to account for variant spellings

*	replaces an indeterminate number of unknown characters.
?	replaces each unknown character

Using operators to expand and narrow your search

AND	both terms must appear in your results. Use it to narrow searches, e.g., hawks and breeding.
OR	either term must appear in your results. Use it to expand searches, e.g., dogs or canines.
AND NOT	excludes records with the specified term, e.g., foundations and not charitable. Be careful when using AND NOT because the word you are excluding may occur in the record in a context unrelated to your search, especially if it is a common word.

To insure that your search statement is interpreted in the way you intended, always use parentheses to indicate the logical structure of your statement if you use more than one operator. E.g., (canines or dogs) and (vaccinations or health)

Limiting results

Types of limits available within the Advanced Search form: language, document type, journal name, time period, publication date.

Saving your search strategy and/or results

You can e-mail search results to yourself, save them to a disc or file, and display them for printing.

Full text/Document delivery

Some full text is available. Find sources (usually periodicals) that aren’t full-text.

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA)

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) includes a variety of databases in medicine, biology, environmental science, computer science and engineering, social sciences and humanities. It allows for both quick and advanced searching.
Periodicals covered

Using truncation and wildcards to account for variant spellings

*	replaces zero or more characters within or at the end of a word and so provides all the forms of a root word. It also substitutes for an unlimited number of characters within a word.
?	substitutes for a single character, but not for 0 characters (cell? will not find ‘cell,’ only ‘cells.’ ?? will substitute for 2 characters, ??? for 3, etc.

Using operators to expand and narrow your search

AND	both terms must appear in your results. Use it to narrow searches, e.g., hawks and breeding.
OR	either term must appear in your results. Use it to expand searches, e.g., dogs or canines.
NOT	NOT excludes records with the specified term, e.g., foundations not charitable. Be careful when using NOT because the word you are excluding may occur in the record in a context unrelated to your search, especially if it is a common one. Also, ‘within n’ can be used for proximity searching, when ‘n’ is a number

To insure that your search statement is interpreted in the way you intended, always use parentheses to indicate the logical structure of your statement if you use more than one operator. E.g., (canines or dogs) and (vaccinations or health)

Limiting results

Types of limits usually available: language, document type, date. Limits vary by database.

Saving your search strategy and/or results

You can e-mail search results to yourself, save them to a disc or file, and display for printing.

You may save up to 20 search strategies for a period of 6 months by clicking on the “Search History/Alerts button. For more information consult CSA Help.

Full text/Document delivery

Full-text links are sometimes available. Find sources (usually periodicals) that aren’t full-text.

Databases Included

Agriculture & Environmental Biotechnology Algology, Mycology & Protozoology Abstracts Animal Behavior Abstracts Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries ARTBibliographies Modern Bacteriology Abstracts BioEngineering Abstracts Biological Sciences Calcium & Calcified Tissue Abstracts Ceramic Abstracts/World Ceramic Abstracts Chemoreception Abstracts Computer Abstracts International Computer and Information Systems Abstracts Conference Papers Index

CSA Neuroscience Abstracts Ecology Abstracts EconLit EIS: Digests of Environmental Impact Statements Electronics and Communications Abstracts Entomology Abstracts Environmental Engineering Abstracts Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management ERIC Genetics Abstracts Health and Safety Science Abstracts Human Genome Abstracts Immunology Abstracts Industrial and Applied Microbiology Abstracts Internet and Personal Computing Abstracts

Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Nucleic Acids Abstracts Oceanic Abstracts Oncogenes and Growth Factors Abstracts Plant Science Pollution Abstracts Risk Abstracts Sociological Abstracts SoftBase Solid State and Superconductivity Abstracts TOXLINE Virology and AIDS Abstracts Water Resources Abstracts Worldwide Political Science Abstracts Zoological Record Plus

Tufts Dissertations and Theses

Dissertations and Theses at Tufts
Find the full text of hundreds of Ph. D. and Masters’ papers written at Tufts from 1996 to the present. The database is derived from papers submitted to Dissertations Abstracts and is searchable by author, title, date, keyword and adviser.

FirstSearch

FirstSearch is a group of approximately 25 databases including WorldCat (the premier source for locating materials at libraries worldwide), Dissertations, PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service), and many more. FirstSearch allows you to search up to three databases simultaneously.

WorldCat is a database of over 50 million holdings of libraries nationwide. Use it to look up topics, titles, authors; complete bibliographic citations; borrow materials not owned by Tufts from other libraries; identify holdings of libraries you plan to travel to, etc. WorldCat includes a variety of materials, from manuscripts written in the 11th century to websites and DVDs.

Using truncation and wildcards to account for variant spellings

#	replaces one character within or at the end of a word
?	replaces zero to nine characters within a word
?n	(where n is a number) replaces up to the number of characters specified
*	replaces one or more characters at the end of a word
+	searches for plurals formed with either -s or -es

Using operators to expand and narrow your search

AND	both terms must appear in your results. Use it to narrow searches, e.g., hawks and breeding.
OR	either term must appear in your results. Use it to expand searches, e.g., dogs or canines.
NOT	excludes records with the specified term, e.g., foundations not charitable. Be careful when using NOT because the word you are excluding may occur in the record in a context unrelated to your search, especially if it is a common one.
W#	(where # is a number from 1 to 25) specifies that the words must be within # words of each other in the order specified, e.g., history w3 France. For words to be adjacent (#=0), just use W.
N#	(where # is a number from 1 to 25) specifies that the words must be within # words of each other in any order. For words to be adjacent (#=0), just use N.

To insure that your search statement is interpreted the way you intended, always use parentheses to indicate the logical structure of your statement if you use more than one operator. E.g., (canines or dogs) and (vaccinations or health)

Limiting results

Limiting varies depending upon the databases selected. Types of limits available: date of publication, document type, language, libraries that own the item – also full-text availability in certain databases.

Saving your search strategy and/or results

You can e-mail search results to yourself. FirstSearch automatically saves search strategies, but only while the session is active.

Full text/Document delivery

Full text is not available. Find sources (usually periodicals) that aren’t full-text.

Databases Included

Periodicals covered

Applied Science & Technology Art Index BasicBIOSIS BioDigest Biography Index Biological & Agricultural Index Book Review Digest

Consumer Index Disclosure Dissertations Education Index Essay & General Literature FactSearch GEOBASE GPO

Library Literature MDXHealth PAIS Papers First SIRS Researcher World Almanac WorldCat

InfoTrac

InfoTrac databases cover a good mix of popular and scholarly materials on a wide range of topics. Over 50% of the articles in these databases are full text online.

Using truncation and wildcards to account for variant spellings

*	replaces zero or more characters at the end of a word.
?	replaces exactly one character within or at the end of a word. Use multiple ?s to replace the specified number of characters, e.g., psych????y will find either psychiatry or psychology.
!	replaces zero or one character. It can be used to find both British and American spellings, e.g., colo!r will find both colour and color.

There are additional symbols used only in relevancy searches. See InfoTrac help for an explanation of these.

Using operators to expand and narrow your search

AND	both terms must appear in your results. Use it to narrow searches, e.g., hawks and breeding.
OR	either term must appear in your results. Use it to expand searches, e.g., dogs or canines.
NOT	excludes records with the specified term, e.g., foundations not charitable. Be careful when using NOT because the word you are excluding may occur in the record in a context unrelated to your search, especially if it is a common one.
W#	(where # is a number) specifies that the terms must be within # words of each other in the order specified, e.g., history w4 France.
N#	(where # is a number) specifies that the terms must be within # words of each other in any order.

Additional operators are used for searching date ranges. See InfoTrac help for these.

To insure that your search statement is interpreted the way you intended, always use parentheses to indicate the logical structure of your statement if you use more than one operator. E.g., (canines or dogs) and (vaccinations or health)

Limiting results

Limiting varies depending upon the database selected.
Types of limits available: date of publication, publication type (including refereed or peer-reviewed journals in Expanded Academic ASAP), availability of full text, source title.

Saving your search strategy and/or results

You can e-mail search results to yourself. InfoTrac automatically saves search strategies, but only while the session is active. At your own computer (not in Tisch), you can save searches and strategies permanently. To utilize this feature, please read Infomark help in InfoTrac.

Full text/Document delivery

Full text can be printed and e-mailed for over half the articles in InfoTrac. Find sources (usually periodicals) that aren’t full-text.

Databases included

Periodicals covered. Select title lists. You may also access the Title List within each database.

Biography Resource Center + The Complete Marquis Who's Who	Business and Company ASAP
Contemporary Literary Criticism - Select	Expanded Academic ASAP
General Business File ASAP	General Reference Center Gold
Health Reference Center Academic

LexisNexis

LexisNexis includes Academic, Statistical, History, Congressional, and Environmental information services. Use LexisNexis to search and obtain full text of worldwide newspapers and magazines, wire service reports, television & radio news broadcasts, campus newspapers, and legal and statistical materials. It is not recommended for locating scholarly materials.

Using truncation and wildcards to account for variant spellings

*	replaces one character within a word. Use multiple * to replace the specified number of characters, e.g., psych****y will find either pyschiatry or psychology.
!	replaces one or more characters at the end of a word.

Using operators to expand and narrow your search (Guided News Search Mode)

AND	both terms must appear in your results. Use it to narrow searches, e.g., hawks and breeding.
OR	either term must appear in your results. Use it to expand searches, e.g., dogs or canines.
AND NOT	excludes records with the specified term, e.g., foundations and not charitable. Be careful using AND NOT because the word you are excluding may occur in the record in a context unrelated to your search, especially if it is a common one.
W/s	specifies that the terms must be in the same sentence, e.g., frogs w/s deformed.
W/p	specifies that the terms must be in the same paragraph.
W/#	(where # is a number) specifies that the terms must be within # words of each other in any order.
PRE/#	(where # is a number) specifies that the terms must be within # words of each other in the order specified.
N#	(where # is a number) specifies that the terms must be within # words of each other in any order.

To insure that your search statement is interpreted in the way you intended, always use parentheses to indicate the logical structure of your statement if you use more than one operator. E.g., (canines or dogs) and (vaccinations or health)

Limiting results

You can limit by date and material type in the Quick News Search. In the Guided News Search, you can also limit searches to a single publication.

Saving your search strategy and/or results

You can e-mail lists of citations to yourself. Full-text items must be e-mailed individually. Saving search strategies is not possible.

Periodicals indexed

Lists of sources are located with the various sections of LexisNexis. Look for the source list button on the search page.

Full text/Document delivery

Full text can be printed and e-mailed for all retrieved items.

Ovid

Ovid contains a number of biomedical and psychology databases. Ovid allows you to search several databases simultaneously. It also indicates whether or not Tufts owns a particular item. When you are done with Ovid, please log off using the exit button on the screen. A limited number of simultaneous users are allowed and logging off will free up resources for other users.

Using truncation and wildcards to account for variant spellings

$	replaces zero or more characters at the end of a word.
?	is used within or at the end of a query word to substitute for one or no characters. For additional information, see Ovid Help.

Using operators to expand and narrow your search

AND	both terms must appear in your results. Use it to narrow searches, e.g., hawks and breeding.
OR	either term must appear in your results. Use it to expand searches, e.g., dogs or canines.
NOT	excludes records with the specified term, e.g., foundations not charitable. Be careful when using NOT because the word you are excluding may occur in the record in a context unrelated to your search, especially if it is a common one.
ADJ#	(where # is a number) specifies that the terms be within # words of each other in any order, e.g., physician adj5 relationship.
N#	(where # is a number) specifies that the terms must be within # words of each other in any order.

To insure that your search statement is interpreted in the way you intended, always use parentheses to indicate the logical structure of your statement if you use more than one operator. E.g., (canines or dogs) and (vaccinations or health)

Limiting results

Limiting varies depending upon the databases selected. Limits generally available include language, publication date, publication type, content type, and availability of full text online.

Saving your search strategy and/or results

You can e-mail search results to yourself. To save a search strategy, on the search screen select Save Search History. A temporary search strategy can only be saved for 24 hours, but see Ovid Help for additional possibilities.

Full text/Document delivery

Some full text is available. Document delivery is available. Create a marked list of the documents to be ordered. Scroll to the end of the citation list screen and fill in the requested formatting information; then click on the Order button at the right of the screen.

Find sources (usually periodicals) that aren’t full-text.

Databases included

AARP Ageline Periodicals covered ACP Journal Club CAB Abstracts Periodicals covered CINAHL Periodicals covered Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects HealthSTAR/Ovid Healthstar MEDLINE Periodicals covered PsycINFO Periodicals covered

ProQuest

In ProQuest databases, searching varies depending on the database you use, but some general guidelines are below. See help screens for individual databases you wish to search.

Using truncation and wildcards to account for variant spellings

*	substitutes for any number of characters.

Using operators to expand and narrow your search

AND	both terms must appear in your results. Use it to narrow searches, e.g., hawks and breeding.
OR	either term must appear in your results. Use it to expand searches, e.g., dogs or canines.
NOT	excludes records with the specified term, e.g., foundations not charitable. Be careful when using NOT because the word you are excluding may occur in the record in a context unrelated to your search, especially if it is a common one.

Limiting results

Limiting varies widely. See help screens for individual databases you wish to search.

Saving your search strategy and/or results

Many of the databases allow you to e-mail search results. See help screens for individual databases you wish to search.

Full text/Document delivery

Full text is available in all databases except the International Index to the Performing Arts. Find sources (usually periodicals) that aren’t full-text.

Databases included

ABI/Inform Periodicals covered Acta Sanctorum African American Poetry 1760-1900 Alt-PressWatch American Periodicals Series American Poetry ArchivesUSA Bible in English Digital National Security Archives Early English Books Online Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare

Ethnic NewsWatch Periodicals covered GenderWatch Periodicals covered International Index to Music Periodicals Periodicals covered International Index to the Performing Arts Periodicals covered New York Times Online American Poetry Patrologia Latina PolicyFile Wall Street Journal

RLG Eureka

RLG Eureka includes Anthropology Plus (Periodicals covered), Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals (Periodicals covered), the Bibliography of the History of Art (Periodicals covered), and History of Science, Technology and Medicine (Periodicals covered). It allows for basic, advanced and command line searching.

Using truncation and wildcards to account for variant spellings

?	replaces an indeterminate number of unknown characters.

Using operators to expand and narrow your search

AND	both terms must appear in your results. Use it to narrow searches, e.g., hawks and breeding.
OR	either term must appear in your results. Use it to expand searches, e.g., dogs or canines.
NOT	excludes records with the specified term, e.g., foundations not charitable. Be careful when using NOT because the word you are excluding may occur in the record in a context unrelated to your search, especially if it is a common one.

Limiting results

Types of limits available within the Advanced Search form: journal title, language, publication date. Additional limits are available; check database help for the database you are searching.

Saving your search strategy and/or results

You can e-mail search results to yourself, also save them to a disc or file, and display them for printing.

Full text/Document delivery

Full text is not available. Find sources (usually periodicals) that aren’t full-text.

WebSPIRS

WebSPIRS includes the Mental Measurements Yearbook, the MLA International Bibliography (Periodicals covered), the ATLA Religion Database (Periodicals covered), and the Philosopher’s Index (Periodicals covered). It allows for both basic and advanced searching.

Using truncation and wildcards to account for variant spellings

*	replaces a string of 0 or more characters
?	replaces one character or none

Using operators to expand and narrow your search

AND	both terms must appear in your results. Use it to narrow searches, e.g., hawks and breeding.
OR	either term must appear in your results. Use it to expand searches, e.g., dogs or canines.
NOT	excludes records with the specified term, e.g., foundations not charitable. Be careful when using NOT because the word you are excluding may occur in the record in a context unrelated to your search, especially if it is a common one.
ADJ	retrieves terms next to each other in a specified order.
NEAR	retrieves both terms in the same sentence.
WITH	retrieves both terms in the same field.

To insure that your search statement is interpreted in the way you intended, always use parentheses to indicate the logical structure of your statement if you use more than one operator. E.g., (canines or dogs) and (vaccinations or health)

Limiting results

Types of limits available: language, publication type, publication year.

Saving your search strategy and/or results

You can e-mail search results to yourself, also save them to a disc or file, and display them for printing.

You can save your search history to be used again and set up an alerting service for new results. Consult ‘Help – Index’ and then view ‘SDIs’ and ‘Search History – Saving’ and ‘Alerts’ for more information. Or within ‘Help – Contents,’ look for those topics within ‘Using Search Results.’

Full text/Document delivery

Some full text is available. Find sources (usually periodicals) that aren’t full-text.

Web of Knowledge

Web of Knowledge databases include the unique Web of Science databases, published for more than 40 years by the Institute for Scientific Information, and are searchable by author, title, topic, etc., but their singular value is the ability to trace topics of research through time. An important article that was published in 1992, for example, can be the basis of a search of all papers that cited it subsequent to its publication, thereby allowing a researcher to become familiar with important authors, how the topic has changed as it has been studied, new areas to be researched, etc. They are searchable as a unit and separately, depending on your research needs.

Using truncation and wildcards to account for variant spellings

*	replaces zero or more characters within or at the end of a word. When doing an author search, always use an * if you don't have the full name and two initials, e.g., dibiaggio j*.
?	replaces one character within or at the end of a word.

Using operators to expand and narrow your search

AND	both terms must appear in your results. Use it to narrow searches, e.g., hawks and breeding.
OR	either term must appear in your results. Use it to expand searches, e.g., dogs or canines.
NOT	excludes records with the specified term, e.g., foundations not charitable. Be careful when using NOT because the word you are excluding may occur in the record in a context unrelated to your search, especially if it is a common one.
SAME	specifies that the terms must be in the same sentence or data field.

To insure that your search statement is interpreted in the way you intended, always use parentheses to indicate the logical structure of your statement if you use more than one operator. E.g., (canines or dogs) and (vaccinations or health)

Limiting results

Types of limits available: language, document type, date.

Saving your search strategy and/or results

You can e-mail search results to yourself.
Advanced Search lets you save your search query and results via the Save History link. You will be able to download the search strategy to a local file. Systems vary in exactly how they handle this. Read the Web of Science Help on Saving a History File and also on Opening and Running a Saved History File for full details. Saved queries are not available at Tisch PCs because of security software.

Full text/Document delivery

Some full text is available. Find sources (usually periodicals) that aren’t full-text.

Databases Included

Periodicals covered

Arts & Humanities Citation Index (Web of Science) BIOSIS Previews Derwent Innovations Index ISI Current Contents Connect ISI Essential Science Indicators

ISI Proceedings Journal Citation Reports Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science) Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science)

Journal Citation Reports provides easy access to data that helps you evaluate and compare scholarly journals in the sciences and social sciences using citation data drawn from over 8,400 journals from over 3,000 publishers worldwide. JCR provides statistics on the highest impact journals, most frequently used journals, the hottest journals, and the largest journals. JCR is searchable by subject, publisher, and journal title.