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Library Instruction on Searching and Accessing Resources
- 1. Instructor: Sandra Yates Instructional Technologies Librarian sandra.yates@exch.library.tmc.edu 713-799-7176
- 2. For More Information • Library’s website eTutorials – http://www.library.tmc.edu/usingthelibrary/etutorials/ • Packet • Contact me Sandra Yates Instructional Technologies Librarian sandra.yates@exch.library.tmc.edu 713-799-7176
- 4. Searching (Simple) Boolean Operators AND, OR, NOT, *, ?, “”, () http://www.library.tmc.edu/usingthelibrary/etutorials/prosearchboolean.html
- 6. Results
- 8. Accessing
- 10. How to Do it
Editor's Notes
- ProSearch is the federated search engine provided my The TMC Library.Basically, the ProSearch tool allows you to search up to 27 library resources - PubMed, CINAHL, Medline, and library catalog – simultaneously.Today, I’ll introduce you to the tool. It’s basic functions and operations. The last part of the class, we will go through some handy ways you can use the tool in your research.
- Before we begin, here are a few sources where you can find more of the information that I’ll be going through today.There are a few ProSearch tutorials on the library’s website under Using the Library > eTutorials.Handouts from those tutorials are in your packets. Does everyone have a packet.You can also contact me is you have any issues or questions about using ProSearch or what we go through today.
- First, to give you a quick overview for ProSearch, here are 5 things to remember.ProSearch is a tool. It gives you quick access to multiple database at one time.ProSearch points you to the appropriate resources. The results list produced by ProSearch links you to full-text articles, abstracts, citations, and databases.ProSearch is a start. ProSearch retrieves a sample of relevant content from several databases, but it is not exhaustive. For more extensive and focused results, you will need to search the native databases, like Medline and PubMed, individually.ProSearch is better that Google. More appropriately, it’s different. There are two approaches to searching content on the Internet. Google crawls the web and indexes the content published on webpages. In contrast, federated searches like ProSearch, uses your search request and fills out query forms to retrieve content stored in databases. It yields more current content. Once the material in in the database it is available to you to retrieve.ProSearch is easy to use. You type in a search, review the results, and access content. And we’ll go through a few variations of this in a little bit.
- There are 2 ways you can search: Simple and Advanced.Simple Search is simply a single search box where you type a topic, keyword, author, or title. You can find it on every page on the Website up in the header.It’s a full text (all fields) search of all the designated 27 collections.Even in Simple search you can do very sophisticated searching by using Boolean operators.There should be a table in your packet of the different operators and examples that you can use. We can try a few later.
- Advanced search is not much more complicated. It gives you a few more options for a more focused search. It allows you to use one or more of these fields and select specific collections (or databases) listed on the right.Full text field searches keywords, phrases, names found within the entire text of the documents in the database, which is basically what the simple search does.In advanced search you can narrow the results using multiple fields, Title field and author.Or if you want articles on a specific topic within a certain date rage, you can do a full text and date range fieldsWe’ll go over some searching techniques a little later.
- Let’s so a quick search, to see how to work with the results page. So go to the library’s homepage….When you conduct a search, it produces an aggregated list of results from all the collections that you selected.As a quick overview of the results page. The main areas that will help you use, refine, and manage your search results:Results lists (appear immediately when results are retrieved) The results are sorted by relevance from that first retrieved collection.Status Bar: shows how many collections have been searched. Click add results to add the latest retrieved results from the other collections and the results list will be re sorted by relevance.Collection Status: you can see which collections have been searched, waiting to be searched, or timed-out.Clusters in the “Results Topic” section. With a click, you can refine filter your search to specific topics, authors, or publication.Selection Icons. You can select and deselect titles, and they are sent to My Selections.If you click on Preferences, you can adjust how many titles are listed on one page.
- There are two ways to access content from ProSearch:The Find It! Button usually takes you directly to the article.The title link will take you to the database that stores the article or article information. The database is listed just under the title.
- For instance, this is a single citation that appears in three different databases. This might be hard to see, but each link goes to each database – PubMed, Health Science Nursing/Academic Edition, and Scopus.
- Finally, you can export, print, and send your results to citation management applications, like RefWorks. We’ll go over this shortly.
- Simple Search[demo – keyword & refining results]-search blood pressureRefine results:Session PreferencesSort byLimit toNarrow by (Clusters)Search: blood AND pressure NOT hypertension[demo – Boolean & refining results]Advanced Search[demo – library materials][demo – citation]Export resultsSelectionsAlerts – with a ProSearch Account, you can save your search and ask for alerts when results change.Email/printSend to citation manager