Slide 1
In this ProQuest Dialog™ module we will see how to conduct a basic search in the engineering and technology literature and learn about some new features.
Slide 2
We'll login with our ProQuest Dialog™ user id and password. Our initial login will take us to the opening screen.
Slide 3
This is the opening screen. The top bar shows how many databases are available, and provides navigation options. From here we can conduct a search in all available databases or choose to view the industries horizontally or we can scroll down and choose a particular database to search. We will click on the icon for the industry group Engineering & technology.
Slide 4
We'll begin our search in the 13 databases in the Engineering & technology industry group by typing one or more terms in the search box at the top of the screen. As we enter our terms, notice that ProQuest Dialog™ offers suggestions that we can select, or we can continue to type in our own terms. Note, too, that we can turn off the auto-suggestion feature.
Slide 5
Our topic has to do with radio frequency identification and security standards. We have entered our search term with a misspelled word.
Slide 6
ProQuest Dialog prompts with the correct spelling and helps us to get back on track. We'll choose the search statement with the correct spelling by clicking on it and executing a new statement. Now, notice the suggested subjects from ProQuest® Smart Search. Certain databases provide suggested controlled vocabulary terms for related topics based on our query.
We're going to click on Search within and modify our search.
Slide 7
The search syntax allows us to use the question mark as a wildcard for one character and the asterisk for open truncation, including left-hand truncation. We're looking for gen2, an EPCGlobal RFID protocol. Asterisk global asterisk can lead us to "global" or "epcglobal" or globalization and other variations.
When the results come back we can quickly scan the titles to see if we're on the right track. ProQuest Dialog finds not only the exact terms we entered in our search, but plurals, as well.
Slide 8
We can use the date slider to narrow retrieval to specific time periods, such as a year, a range of years or months or days. By hovering over a bar, we see the number of retrieved records published in a certain range. We slide the bar tabs to the years we want and press Update; or we could click on a bar, such as one for a current range. As we narrow the range we can see the number of records by month.
From here we can narrow by particular journals, document types, subjects, classification names and more.
Slide 9
We can narrow results by ranked lists of journal names, document types, classification terms, authors and more if we wish. By default, our results are sorted by relevance and we can sort results by date, most recent first or oldest first. We'll browse records and select items to view later in bulk.
Slide 10
A Preview link to the right of the title lets us view parts of the record for relevancy and see the context of our search terms.
Slide 11
We clicked a title to view and since we are transactional customers we can read a price preview. We'll press continue to proceed to the record.
Slide 12
This article appears right on target and we can add it to selected items to view later, email it to a colleague, print it out, cite it, export it or save it as a file. The lower part of the record contains hyperlinked terms we can click to search.
Slide 13
We can also change the language of a specific document by clicking Translate. A dialog box opens where we can choose to translate a record, for example, from English to Japanese; then click the translate button. This will work particularly well in cases where we retrieve a record in a language other than our native tongue and we wish to see a translation.
Records can be saved, printed, emailed, cited or exported only in their original language, so we would have to use browser file save functions or copy and paste the translation into a word-processing software to keep the translation.
Slide 14
We've just conducted a cross-file search across all the available databases available in the Engineering & technology module. Now, we'll search in one database. By clicking "Change" at the top of the page, we're presented with a list of databases with a brief description of the content of each database. We clicked on View by industry. We'll clear all by selecting and deselecting Select all and scrolling down to EI Compendex®. Then, we'll click the orange Information icon to learn about Ei Compendex and click the hyperlink on the database name or we can check the box to the left of Ei Compendex and press "Use selected databases."
Slide 15
Now in this search form specific to Ei Compendex, we'll type in our topic of interest: high definition TV. To be comprehensive we'll OR in high definition television and click on the magnifying glass.
Slide 16
On the Results page we see our search query and the number of records retrieved that fit the search criteria. Below the query box we can hyperlink to modify the search or get search tips.
I can set up an Alert, create an RSS feed or save and store the search strategy for later or periodic use. In order to save a search strategy I will need a My Research account. To learn about My Research view the My Research module.
On the right-hand side, I can Sort results by relevance or by date, and I can narrow results by choosing ranked authors, journal titles, subjects, classification names and more.
Let's search within to find articles having to do with medical imagery in high definition TV.
Slide 17
When we click on "Search within" ProQuest Dialog takes us to the Search within results query box at the bottom of the screen. We'll enter terms using truncation with the asterisk and click Search. This time we'll control how many characters we will allow after the root stem by entering bracket, asterisk, a number for allowable characters and a closing bracket.
Slide 18
The Results page displays our search statement and shows the number of hits. We've clicked Detailed view in the title list and we can see our highlighted search terms and an icon for document type. The person in front of a paper is the icon for conference paper. We have also sorted our results by publication date in descending order. Now, we can further refine our search by qualifying to Document type in the Narrow results by panel. We clicked the plus sign to the left of Document type to see a ranked list of document types found in our retrieved records. Now we'll click More options to browse the list.
Slide 19
Here we'll check the boxes for terms we wish to include, and we'll click Apply.
Slide 20
Through this powerful tool, we have honed down to just the results we want to see. We can see what we've done and how we narrowed by document type. This criterion appears just above the titles and to the right in the Narrow results by panel under Document type.
Slide 21
ProQuest Dialog gives us an easy way to select records we wish to keep for later and view together with other records of interest we have found during the same online session. We can select records by checking boxes to the left of the titles. We see that we still have our 5 records from the earlier search in the Engineering and Technology industry category and the five records we've selected now. The selected records remain until we logoff by clicking Exit.
Slide 22
We're ready to view our selected records so we'll click the hyperlink for Selected items and we'll choose how much of the records we wish to view.
Slide 23
If we are transactional customers, ProQuest Dialog displays an estimated cost to view the records. Press Continue to proceed.
Slide 24
These are our selected records. We can scroll down and read them, jump to specific records and decide what we want to do with them. ProQuest Dialog holds them for the duration of the session.
Slide 25
We can email these records to a colleague, or print, cite, export, save as file or save them to My Research, our own personal knowledge-management space in ProQuest Dialog. Let's export these records to Excel.
Slide 26
Exporting to Excel we can present our findings in an easy-to-read manner.
Slide 27
At the end of the session click Exit to log off.
Slide 28
To sum up, Basic search is an easy way to get quick and relevant answers. We chose our industry and subsequently a particular database. We entered a search query and then used Search Within and Narrow results by features. For open truncation, we used an asterisk and we could have used a question mark to specify allowing one more character alone.
We were able to click on a button to preview records and we browsed and selected records of choice to work with during the session.
We saw how easy it is to email, print out, save or export records.
Thank you for your interest in ProQuest Dialog.
