This guide can be found under FIND Articles: Help
Go down to Education
Full Text Screen Shot Tutorial
You can access the database under Find Articles: Databases by Subject: Education
off of the library’s homepage at www.hamline.edu/bushlibrary
Education Full Text (formerly Education Abstracts) is a bibliographic
database that indexes and abstracts articles of at least one column in length
from English-language periodicals and yearbooks published in the
This is the homepage for the Advanced
Search. Components are broken into three parts explained below.
Try to use navigation commands provided by the database and not the browser:
forward, back, home. Using browser commands may “mess” with your
navigation. Most command actions will be at the bottom, in the blue bar,
and will vary from which page you are on.
In the Advanced Search you have three search boxes, which are
automatically set at “All- Smart Search.” This type of search can
also be called a glorified keyword or natural language
search. Note that you can change the type of search through the drop-down
menu.
Below the search boxes are some “limiters” that will allow you to customize
your search. You can sort results by (1)
dates or relevance. To the right (2) you can limit to articles with Full-Text. * This is NOT recommended as this database has a
direct linking feature to our catalog and other journal indexes and you might
miss items that might be better for your research. The other important
limiter is for Peer Reviewed. This will make sure you are
getting “Scholarly” articles. To see more on Scholarly vs. Popular
Articles, click here
(http://www.hamline.edu/bushlibrary/find_articles/Help/scholarly_vs_pop.html).
The blue
area of your search screen contains several ways to search: Advanced, Basic,
Browse, Create Alerts, etc… Click on Browse to browse subjects, which you can
then check off to search. To look at or save searches you have done click
on Search History.
To make your search more efficient you will want to use a Subject(s)
search. To find these Subject terms for this database click on the
Thesaurus button the left side of the screen. To learn more about
“Subject and Keyword” searching click here (http://www.southalabama.edu/univlib/sauer/subject.html).
(1) Using a database thesaurus can be a very useful tool
to narrow your results. When one uses a general keyword search, it can lead to
a high retrieval of irrelevant items. A keyword search looks at several parts
of a record for a word and not the idea behind that word. EXAMPLE: Using the word “assessment”
in a keyword search may pick up records that deal with educational assessment,
tax assessment, housing assessment, or maybe psychological assessment. As you
can see, a keyword search can pick up a variety of topics.
A Subject or Descriptor search
looks specifically at the subject/descriptor field of a record. This field is
what describes a particular item. Subjects/descriptors are usually assigned
according to a standard of rules such as Library of Congress Subject Headings,
National Library of Medicine Subject Headings, Thesaurus of Psychological
Terms, ERIC Thesaurus, Sociology Terms, etc...
Don’t Worry – You do not have to
memorize the terms you would like to use. Most journal index databases provide
a Thesaurus for you to use. If a database does not provide one do a normal
keyword search, find a record you like, and look at the subject/descriptor
field to find what they used to describe that item. Re-search with your new
terms.
The end result is to narrow and
focus your search to the most relevant items!!!
In the
Thesaurus type in term you are looking for. This will assist you in
finding the proper subject term(s) for your searching. Example: I
want to look at articles on standards in education for schools. I will
type in Educational Standards and click Start. See
results below.
(1) The Thesaurus
is telling me to use Education/Standards for my SUBJECT. It tells me what it is used for and tells me
approximately how many records contain this term as a subject. (2) below the main term you might find related or narrower terms
to help you fine tune your search. Now that we have a search term we can go
back to the Advanced Search.
(1) We
are now going to type in the subject we acquired from the Thesaurus in the top
box.
(2) We
can then set our search to a Subject search, as we now have the proper
subject term.
(3) We
can also limit to Peer Reviewed (Scholarly) articles. Then hit the Start button to search.
(1) Shows how many records the search
yielded. (2) The legend for the icons,
which also appear to left and below of each record. (3) The database will also, whether you did a
subject or a keyword search, suggest some subjects that might be appropriate
for your search. (4) The start of
the records list. You can click on the
links to gain access to the item record.
(5) The navigation commands will
be at the bottom of the screen.
(1) This is the citation information
such as title, author, journal source, etc... (2) This is the abstract or summary
of the item. Read this to see if you
would like to include this record in your research. (3) The Subject(s)
that describe this particular record are listed at the bottom. If you see a subject you like make use of it
by adding to your search. This will
allow you to get even more narrow results. (4) Full
text is not available for this article otherwise you would see the Full Text icons. However you can click on the Find Full Text icon to see if Bush Library
subscribes to the journal in print or through another journal index database.
(1) The citation you are
looking for will be shown in this area. (2a) The
sources that might possibly have the article you are looking for. If you see Bush Memorial Library’s Periodicals Collection that will denote
that Bush Library has or had a print subscription to the journal. Click on the Journal link to search CLICnet and see if we have that particular
issue of the journal. If a
journal index database appears as it does in the example check (2b) the
Feel free to email, save or print
records.
(1) Type in email address and something
in the subject line. (2) Select what you want sent. It is suggested that you click on the Full Text option to include the full
text of the article if it is
available.
To send a
formatted citation make sure that (1) the Fields
is set to Brief Citation Display and then (2) select which citation style you
would like to use.
As
materials are continually added to the database you can create an alert, which
will search the database for you in the future and report the results back to
you. Click on the Alert button to see the options.
Type in your
email address and set other options and then click on the Save Alert button.