Search Tips -— Alt-Press Watch

• The biographical(personal profiles) limiter is useful for locating articles that provide both encyclopedic information as well as more anecdotal material about a person's life. Simply check the limit results box on either the basic or advanced search page. You may also add SU(personal profiles) to your search string.
• If you are looking for lengthy, in depth articles, make use of the word count limiter. WRD(>1000) finds articles containing 1000 words or more.
• All articles are indexed. Use the subject terms to refine your search and combine the su term with keywords. SU(environment) AND recycling.
• Choose Publication Search, select a title and browse through (or search within) issues.
• Make use of Commentary article type to search for narratives on everything from how childhood neighboorhoods have changed to descriptions of life altering decisions.
• Use "quotation marks" to search for exact phrases.
• 2 word queries (such as talk radio) are searched as an exact phrase by default.
• 3 word queries (such as political task force) are searched as words that need to appear in proximity to each other by default.
• Use special characters and operators (below) to focus your query.

Learn About

• Truncation and Wildcard Characters ?, *
• Operators AND, OR, NOT ...
• Search Field Syntax AU(...) for author
• Stop Words the, an, of ...
• Example Searches

Truncation and Wildcard Characters

	The symbol * is used as a right-handed truncation character only; it will find all forms of a word. For example, searching for econom* will find "economy", "economics", economical", etc.
	The symbol ? is used to replace any single character, either inside the word or the right end of the word. ? cannot be used to begin a word. For example, searching for "wom?n" will find "woman" and "women." Searching for "t?re" will find "tire", "tyre", "tore", etc.

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Operators

Boolean, proximity and adjacency operators are used to broaden and narrow your search.

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Search Field Syntax

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Abstract

Search article abstracts for your terms.

Valid Forms:
    ABS
    AB
    ABSTRACT

Examples:
    ABS(research agenda)

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Article Title

The title of an article, such as "This is a democracy and human rights movement." This search field locates the occurrence of search words in the title of the article.

Valid Forms:
    TITLE
    TI

Examples:
    TITLE(movement)
    TI(democracy AND rights)
    TI(human rights movement)

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Article Type / Document Type / Form/Content Type

Use this search field to look for search words or phrases in articles of a certain type.

Valid Forms:
    AT
    TY
    DT

Examples:
    DTYPE(commentary)
    TY(editorial)
    AT(feature)
    DT(interview)
    DTYPE(television review)

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Article Text

Searches only the full text of articles for your search terms.
Note: When searching article text, abstracts are not included in the search.
AND, OR, and other search operators are treated as such unless you enclose a phrase in quotes.

Valid Forms:
    TEXT
    TX

Examples:
    TEXT(Rush Limbaugh)
    TEXT(talk radio OR beltway bandits)

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Author

Use to find articles written by an author or reviewer. You may use either the author's full name or last name, first name format.

Valid Forms:
    AUTHOR
    AU

Examples:
    AUTHOR(William Wichert)
    AU(Wichert, William)

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Citation and Abstract

When you select Citations and abstracts from the drop-down menu, ProQuest searches the following fields:

• Author
  
• Personal Name
  
• Abstract
  
• Product Name
  
• Article Title
  
• Subject Terms
  
• Company Name
  
• Source (publication title)
  
• Geographical Name

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Citation and Article Text

When you select Citation and article text, ProQuest searches within the complete text of the article, the citation fields, and the abstract.

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Company Name / Organization

Search for a company or other organization featured prominently in an article, including the following:
    Associations
    Companies
    Cooperatives
    Divisions of companies
    Governmental organizations
    Political parties
    Other organizations, such as professional sports teams, churches, Native American tribes, and music groups

Valid Forms:
    CO
    Company
    ORG

Examples:
    CO(Philip Morris)
    Company(General Electric)
    ORG(Planned Parenthood)

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Date (Numeric)

The publication date in numeric format (mm/dd/yyyy). For example December 12, 1999 appears as 12/12/1999.

Valid Form:
   PDN
   DDT
   ND
   PD
   PDN
   XP

Example:
   PDN(12/12/1999)

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Geographical name / Location

Use this search field to look for articles in which a geographical area or location figures prominently in the text.

Valid Forms:
    GEO
    GN
    LO
    LOC
    LOCATION
    GC

Examples:
    GEO(Midwest)
    GN(Cuba)
    GEO(California)
    GN(Egypt)

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Headnote

This search field looks for search words that occur in the headnotes of an article. Headnotes are short introductions, explanations, or comments at the beginning of an article. They are different from abstracts in that they do not attempt to summarize the content of the article.

Valid Forms:
    HEAD
    HDN

Examples:
    HEAD(accidents)
    HDN(student*)
    HEAD(economy)

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ISSN

This search field looks for the eight-digit International Standard Serials Number (ISSN), where available. Hyphens are optional.

Valid Forms:
    ISSN
    SN
    ISN

Examples:
    ISSN(0011-4664)
    SN(00916358)

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Issue

Used to search Issue Number. Use keyword(s) to search this field.

Valid Forms:
    ISSUE
    IS

Examples:
   IS(10)

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Language

Used to search Language index. This field contains the language in which the document was published originally. You can select languages from Language field specific index. 

Valid Forms:
    LA
    LN

Examples:
   LA(french)
   LN(french or english)

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Pagination / Start Page

Use to search for specific pages of a publication. Useful for finding front page articles in newspapers.

Valid Forms:
    STARTPAGE
    PAG
    PAGE

Type PAGE(1A)OR PAGE(A1) in the text box of Basic Search and you will get newspaper articles from the front page of Section A. This is an easy way to limit your search to front page articles.

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Personal Name

Use to find articles about a person. When the Personal Name field is displayed in an article citation, the life spans of historical figures follow their names.

You can enter the name in any format. Searching for NA(John A Smith) will return the same results as NA(Smith, John A).

Valid Forms:
    NAME
    NA
    PNM
    NM
    PER

Examples:
    NAME(Rush Limbaugh)
    NA(Swap, Adam)

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Publication Name / Journal Name

Used to search by a specific publication or publications.

Valid Forms:
    SOURCE
    SO
    JR
    JN
    JO
    SR
    PTI
    PUB

Examples:
    SO(City Limits)
    SO(Village Voice)
    JO(New) -- retrieves all periodicals with "new" in their titles.

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Publisher Location

Used to search Place of Publication, Publisher Address and Producer Address index.

Use keyword(s) to search this field.

Valid Forms:
    PL

Examples:
   PL(spain)
   PL(New York)

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Source Type

Use to include or exclude the following source types from your search: dissertations, newspapers, periodicals and wire feeds.

Valid Forms:
    STYPE

Examples:
    NA(Donna Shalala) AND STYPE(periodical)
    GEO(Japan) AND STYPE(newspapers)

    Note: The Diversity databases do not have dissertations or wire feeds as source types.

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Standard Number

Used to search ISSN and ISBN index. Use the hyphen when searching for ISSN. Search for ISBN without hyphens. 

Valid Forms:
    SNUM
    SNO

Examples:
    SN(1010-0652)
    SN(0415102006)

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Subject Terms

Use the Subject search field to look for articles about a specific subject.

Valid Forms:
    SUB
    TERMS
    SB
    SU

Examples:
    SUB(community action)
    SU(environmental law)
   

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Volume

Used to search Volume. Use keyword(s) to search this field.

Valid Forms:
    VOLUME
    VO
    VOL

Examples:
   VO(100)

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Word Count

The number of words in the article text. Use this search field to locate articles under (<) or over (>) a certain length.

Valid Forms:
    WORDS
    WRD
    WD
    WC

Examples:
    WORDS(<1000) ­ finds articles containing 1000 words or less
    WRD(>500) ­ finds articles containing 500 words or more
    WC(>750 AND <1000) finds articles between 750 and 1000 words

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Year

Used to search Publication Year index.

Valid Forms:
    YR
    PY

Examples:
    YR(1986)
    YR(1986-1987)
    YR(>1998)
    YR(<1998)

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Stop Words

ProQuest ignores the following frequently-used words. To use them as part of a search phrase, enclose them with quotation marks: e.g. "the sound and the fury".

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Example Searches

The examples below illustrate the kinds of searches you can build in Basic Search or Advanced Search using operators and fields.

Content varies between ProQuest databases; therefore, the number of articles found using the examples below would vary.

neutrality

Finds articles that contain the word neutrality.

educat*

Finds articles containing the words; education, educator, educate, educating.

The "*" is the truncation symbol to find multiple forms of a word.

clean air AND environmental law

Finds articles that contain the phrases clean air and environmental law.

"Freedom of Information Act"

Finds articles that contain the phrase Freedom of Information Act.

Note: Always enclose phrases longer than two words in quotation marks. If you don't the words are searched separately, not as a phrase.

sub(hazardous substances) AND carcinogens

Finds articles about hazardous substances that mention carcinogens.

The subject search field will help you find articles that are about a particular subject.

The addition of keywords (in this case - carcinogens) allow you to focus your search more precisely.

author(Jules Feiffer)

Finds cartoons drawn by Jules Feiffer, noted Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist and book author.


There are two valid forms for an author search - Author or the abbreviation AU and the name may be inverted - ex. au(Feiffer, Jules).

at(interview) AND text(reform*)

Finds interviews of people involved in reform. Add other keywords to restrict results to environmental reform, political reform, social reform or labor reform.

Use the Article Type search field to find different kinds of articles, including biography, commentary, and feature.

Note that dtype is also a valid syntax form for Article Type.

source(City Limits) AND text(urban planning) AND PDN(>01/01/2000 AND <12/31/2003)

Finds articles from the magazine City Limits about urban planning published between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2003.

Use source to restrict your search to a specific newspaper or journal.

Add a keyword for articles that contain that word.

Use PDN to restrict to a specific date range.

at(book review) AND text(health)

Finds book reviews covering health issues.

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