From the Online Research Resources select the tab titled Article Indexes and Abstracts.
ABI/INFORM is a business database. Because of this we will select Business from the Subjects lists.
Notice the various ways to access ABI/INFORM.
For our purposes, we will choose ABI/INFORM Complete.
As you enter the database, notice that the search option defaults to Advanced.
We’ll cover advanced searching a little later.
Notice, there is another option for searching ABI?/INFORM; the basic search option.
Let’s try a Basic search first.
In a Basic search we can type in a term related to our research, or we can use some of the tools provided to us.
The first tool we will look at is Search Tips.
Let’s see what helpful information we can find.
The tips included here can help you to have more focused and effective searches.
Back in the Basic Search screen notice the Browse Topics link.
This assists you in selected the most useful terms for your search in ABI/INFORM.
You can choose to narrow your search for Topics by subject, company, people, or location.
Let’s try Subject.
You can browse through the subject topics by scrolling down, or type a term into the “Jump to” search box.
For the purposes of this example, we will type in Leadership and then click go.
Terms that are associated with the word “leadership” are listed.
You may add these terms to your search, or click on the Narrow link to narrow your search by this related topic.
Let’s narrow our results by clicking Narrow under Leadership Training.
Terms related to Leadership Training are now listed for example Academic achievement.
If you would like you include any of these terms in your search,
click the Add to Search button to the right of the search term.
Again, instead of browsing through all the terms, you can type in a term in the search box.
In this case, let’s use Higher Education.
Once we find correct term for Higher Education we can add it to our search by clicking the Add to Search button.
Back in the Basic Search screen, notice how the terms we have selected are automatically entered into the search box as subjects.
In this screen, you have the option to limit the search further by choosing full text or scholarly journals.
The Database and Date range drop-down menus include other options for limiting your search even further.
Click on the Database drop-down menu, notice the various databases you could choose to search.
In this case select Business.
Also notice the options provided to you in Date Range.
For this example we will not limit the date range.
Now, let’s explore the searching options available in the Advanced tab.
After clicking on Advanced, notice that we can enter a different search term on each line or search box.
We can also select how the term we have entered will be found in the item we will eventually retrieve.
Just as we did in the Basic Search, we have access to Search Tips in the Advanced Search.
Towards the middle of the screen, notice the link to More Search Options.
These can help you to further refine your search in many ways.
If you have a journal in mind that you would like to search, you can type it into the Publication Title search box,
or browse for it by clicking on the Browse Publications link.
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Last modified by: Sarah Hjeltness on 10/8/08