articulate word output€¦ · web view1.4 basic ‘free text’ search. notes: finding content...

PQP_PQDT_For_Students_Subject_Searching

1. PQDT x Students Subject Searching

1.1 ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global for Students

Notes:

Welcome to this session on ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global for Students. This session will show some Search techniques both Basic and Advanced to locate dissertations on a certain topicThis session assumes some familiarity with the ProQuest platform, and watching the related e-learning modules is recommended. Please refer to the ProQuest Platform LibGuide URL in the Resources.

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1.2 Session Objectives

Notes:

In this session you will learn how to:Perform easy basic searches to find dissertations about a given topic

Use the Subject related fields to build more effective searches about the topic

Evaluate and apply different types of search features in order to retrieve targeted and comprehensive results

1.3 ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Across Disciplines

Notes:


The Dissertations and Theses database is a multi-disciplinary resource providing material to support all departments and disciplines.

Dissertations are scholarly, reviewed work resulting from comprehensive and original research.

1.4 Basic ‘Free Text’ Search

Notes:

Finding content is not usually an issue but finding results that are mostly relevant can be sometimes challenging. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses search capabilities help you being more precise. During this module we'll see how, by progressing in various stages of the search.Imagine that we are researching on the impact of economic crises on monetary policies.We'll start with a simple Basic search, putting together several alternative phrases.The truncation symbol, the asterisk, will get results with variants such as recessionary, for example.If no search field is specified in the search, ProQuest is usually looking at the whole document, what we call a free text search. Because theses and dissertations tend to be rather long documents, a free-text search simply designed will bring back a lot of results.If appropriate, we can reduce the number of results by applying some of the Narrow Filters on the left of the Results page, such as the Publication year used here.At a first perusal, many documents seem to be mostly about monetary policy, but we also want to make sure we see its relationship with the concept of economic crisis, so we need to refine the search further.


Basic Free Text 1st results (Slide Layer)

Results after Pub Date Narrow filter (Slide Layer)


1.5 Advanced Search

Notes:

To make a search more efficient, we can turn to the Advanced Search, where we are offered more tools that help us knowing better the structure and the indexing features of the database.

We can analyze the database structure by opening the drop down menu of the searchable fields, and establish we want to search only in the text filled fields, that are relevant for the content, but excluding the Full Text, which is the longest portion of the document.

So these would be the Title, the Abstract and the Subjects field, which in this database contains both the Subject Headings, and the Index terms, or Keywords.

Search Field Menu (Slide Layer)


1.6 Using the database indexing – content related fields

Notes:

When populating the search form, after selecting the fields, we repeat the same search string in each box.

Since we want documents that will contain the terms EITHER in the Title, OR in the Abstract, OR in the Subject fields,

we need to remember to change the logical operator in the menu to OR, since AND is selected by default.

This way we will retrieve far less results, but all will be much more focused than the previous search.


Using the database indexing – subject related fields - Copy (2) (Slide Layer)

Using the database indexing – subject related fields - results (Slide Layer)


1.7 Using the database indexing

– the NOFT field

Notes:

There is an even simpler and faster way of doing this, using the NOFT field.

In other databases this may work very differently from the 3 text fields we used previously, but in PQDT they correspond almost exactly,

As one can see by the number of results.

Using the database indexing – the NOFT field - search (Slide Layer)


Using the database indexing – the NOFT field - Results (Slide Layer)

1.8 Another step forward - Seeking the plurals

Notes:

We should not forget that ProQuest retrieves automatically the plurals, among other variants, except when using the phrase quotes.So, in order to gain more flexibility with our search, since we are now searching fields that are much shorter than the whole text, we can avoid using them and seek more results, still relevant.This way we retrieved also documents with the plurals crises and policies


With Narrow filters (Slide Layer)

Results with plurals (Slide Layer)


1.9 The Subjects indexing

Notes:

Back to the Subject fields.As we mentioned, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses offers two levels of subject-related fields. When an author submits their dissertation or thesis to ProQuest, they must select one primary, and can optionally select two secondary subjects, and up to six keywords to describe their graduate work. The first ones are indexed in the Subject Heading field, the second ones are indexed in the Identifier/Keywords field.Additionally, ProQuest will also assign controlled terms to improve discoverability. These terms are indexed in the Subject Heading field.To search in these fields only, to be even more focused, we can use the Lookup lists available in Advanced Search, to find out if concepts have been used as descriptors, or we can just type in our search strategy in the box, using its latest flexible version.As you can see results may vary greatly depending of the type of search. There is not only one valid strategy. Each one of the possible solutions shown in this session can be right. Only you can evaluate which of these solutions works best for you depending on your needs.


Mainsubject LookUp LIst (Slide Layer)

search with the SU field only (Slide Layer)


1.10 Summary

Notes:

During this session we have seen several solutions and we have learned how to:

Perform easy basic searches to find dissertations about a given topic

Use the Subject related fields to build more effective searches about the topic

Evaluate and apply different types of search features in order to retrieve targeted and comprehensive results.

1.11 Thank you!

Notes:


Thank you for joining this ProQuest Dissertations and Theses session for Students. For more information, please visit our LibGuide at proquest.libguides.com/pqdt.

1.12 Copyright

2. Test Question Bank

Q2.1 Untitled Slide

Q2.2 Pick One

(Pick One, 0 points, 1 attempt permitted)


Choice


articulate word output€¦ · web view1.4 basic ‘free text’ search. notes: finding content...

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