How to Search Periodical Databases

Periodical databases are used to find information on a particular topic in magazines, journals, and newspapers. The databases will provide you with citations or full-text. With citations, you will need to find a specific periodical, and make a photocopy of the article or request it on interlibrary loan. With a full-text article, you can send the article to the printer, download, or, in some cases, send it to your e-mail account. This guide will look at three different general periodical databases produced by three different companies: Expanded Academic ASAP, part of InfoTrac's Search Bank, Academic Search FullTEXT Elite, produced by EBSCOhost, and Periodicals Abstracts Plus Text, part of the Proquest program produced by UMI.

Expanded Academic ASAP

Expanded Academic ASAP covers a wide variety of topics such as religion, law, history, current events, etc. This database has some full-text articles, abstracts, or just citations.

Clicking on the Expanded Academic ASAP icon will take you to SearchBank's main screen. At this point, click on the PROCEED icon. This will take you to a list of SearchBank databases. Click on the Expanded Academic ASAP icon. You will need to decide whether you want to do a subject or keyword search. With a subject search, the word you enter must be in the database's subject guide. If the word is not in the subject guide, your search will yield no results. A keyword search looks at every portion of the record: author, title, abstract, full-text, for the keywords.

A Subject Search in Expanded Academic ASAP

To start a subject search:

Click on the "entry box" and enter your search term.
Hit either <ENTER> or click on the Submit Search icon begin searching.
A list of relevant subjects will appear

Example:
College students
	View	1059 articles

A Keyword Search in Expanded Academic ASAP

Click in the circle next to Key Words
Click on the "entry box" and enter your search term or terms
Hit either <ENTER> or click on the Submit Search icon and begin searching
A list of citations will appear

Citations

After you do a subject or keyword search, you will get a citation list. A citation will be made up of the author, periodical title, volume and issue numbers, periodical date, and page numbers. Below every citation will be a link to View either an extended citation, the abstract, or the text. Clicking on View will take you to either the extended citation, an abstract of the article, or the full-text of the article.

Marking & Printing Records

Scroll down the list and mark the record by clicking on its MARK icon. Mark every record that interests you as you scroll down the list
After looking at all the records, click on the MARK LIST icon at the top, right side of the screen
The records you marked will appear
Click on reformat. The marked records will appear but look different
Click on the PRINT icon on the top row of icons in the middle of the screen
Click on OK and the items you marked will be printed

To Save to a Disk SearchBank documents are saved to a disk in an HTML format. Unless the word processing package you plan to use can read HTML, you will not be able to view the document.

Academic Search FullTEXT Elite

Academic Search FullTEXT Elite is also a general database with information on many different topics like business, the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. There are more than 1000 full-text journals in this database. If a record is not full-text, an abstract of the article will be provided.

Clicking on the Academic Search FullTEXT Elite icon will take you to the main screen of EBSCOhost. To proceed, click on<Login to EBSCOhost>. This will take you to a list of databases. Choose Academic Search FullTEXT Elite.

Enter your search term at the FIND command.
You can click on GET RESULTS or limit your search to FULL TEXT, MAGAZINE, OR DATE PUBLISHED. You can also expand your search from this screen.
ADVANCED KEYWORD SEARCH allows you to create a boolean search using and, or, but not.

Citations

After you conduct your search, a citation list will appear. The title of the article, the author, periodical name, periodical date, volume and issue numbers, along with the page numbers will make up the citation. Clicking on the highlighted article title will take you to a detailed view of the record. Included in this detailed view is an abstract of the article. To get back to the list of citations, click on the RESULT LIST icon at the bottom of the screen. If an article is full text, an open book will appear. Click on the open book to see the article.

E-mailing Records

Scroll down the list and mark the record by clicking in the open box to the left of the record. Mark every record that interests you as you scroll down the list.
After looking at all the records, click on the PRINT/E-MAIL/SAVE icon at the top of the screen.
To get a detailed format printout, including abstract, click in the circle next to <Detailed Format>.
Click in the box and enter your e-mail address.
Click on the E-MAIL icon.
A message will be displayed confirming your request.

Marking & Printing Records

Scroll down the list and mark the record by clicking in the open box to the left of the record. Mark every record that interests you as you scroll down the list.
After looking at all the records, click on the PRINT/E-MAIL/SAVE icon at the top of the screen.
To get a detailed format printout, including abstract, click in the circle next to <Detailed Format>.
Click on the DISPLAY icon.
The records you marked will appear.
Click on the PRINT icon at the top of the screen.
Click on OK and the items you marked will be printed.

Printing Full-Text Records

If an icon that looks like an open book appears next to a record, the full-text of the article is available. Printing the full-text of an article must be done one at a time.

Do the following to start a search:

Click on the OPEN BOOK icon. The full-text of the article will appear.
Click on the PRINT/E-MAIL/SAVE icon at the top of the screen.
Click on the DISPLAY icon and the record you marked will appear.
Click on the PRINT icon at the top of the screen.
Click on OK and the full-text will be printed.

Periodical Abstracts PlusText -- ProQuest

Periodical Abstracts PlusText is part of the ProQuest family of databases produced by UMI. It is similar to both Expanded Academic ASAP and Academic Search FullTEXT as far as content. ProQuest can be accessed through a CD rom standalone computer at Millstein Library or through the Digital Library. These directions are for the standalone version.

How to Search ProQuest ProQuest has several compact disks that cover different time frames of Periodical Abstracts PlusText. The most recent disk will be the default. If you wish to search earlier disks, go to the Information Desk.

Start ProQuest by double-clicking the icon.
Click the checkbox to open the database.
Choose a search method by clicking a toolbar button: by word, source, or topic.
BY WORD: Click in the SEARCH FOR box. For example: health care; health care AND careers; health care OR careers. Click SEARCH.
BY SOURCE: Click the drop down arrow at the right of the Journal Field. Scroll to the journal title you want. Click the journal title to select it and the date/volume/issue field. Click SEARCH.
BY TOPIC: Click a topic in the Topic List. The list may expand to show cross-referenced topics. Click SEARCH.
Select the articles you want from the search results.
Display, print or download your selected articles. If you are printing your articles, change the print menu to print a long (full) record. If you want to save your articles to disk, you need to make selections from the article display box. Choose SAVE AS from the FILE menu. After you select options, you will need to secify a filename, drive and directory. Always save to the "A" drive. A disk may be optained from the information desk at minimal charge.

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Updated 8/31/98

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