ProQuest Quick Start Tutorial

The steps and screen shots displayed below will show how to access and do basic keyword and topic searching using the ProQuest research database via the Empire State College library.

ACCESS:
Before You Begin
If you are unfamiliar with accessing the college's research databases or entering your college login, review the "Access" quick start tutorial.

To Access ProQuest

1. Go to library's home page at www.esc.edu/library.
2. Click on "All Research Databases" in first column.
3. Look for "ProQuest" in the table (listed alphabetically) and select an option from the right column.
4. Enter your college login and password.

• put double quotes around any search phrase or exact combination of keywords (e.g.: "United States of America" or "social psychology").
• Use AND between two keywords or phrases to search for articles containing both terms. (e.g.: Sumatra and tsunami).
• Use OR between keywords to search for articles containing either term (e.g.: teaching or pedagogy).

• Basic Search (default): The image above shows the basic Search options. Use the text box to type in the keyword(s) or phrase that describes your topic. Use AND between separate keywords or phrases and put double quotes (") around keyword phrases.

• Advanced Search: This is almost the same as the Basic Search except that it provides several search boxes to put in keywords or phrases and allows you to designate specific fields to search (e.g.: title, author, etc.) for each box. This is useful if you have a citation but, for example, the author name and title keywords are common ones (e.g.: author: Williams and text: "Iraq war").

• Topic Guide: Each article in the database is assigned "Subject Terms" from a controlled (limited) vocabulary, based on its content. This allows you to accurately locate articles on a topic or issue that might be described with various keywords or terms (e.g.: "pro-choice," "freedom of choice," "pro-abortion," "anti-life," etc.). You have the ability to search or browse this list and then do a search on it, combine subjects or narrow by related topic.

• By Database: The default is to search all the databases within ProQuest. There are several discipline or document type specific databases that you can elect to search individually or in groups. The "ProQuest Research Library" is a general multi-disciplinary database and the ABI/INFORM databases are for business and economic topics. Click on the "Select multiple databases" link to see descriptions of each database and to select multiple ones from the list.

• Full-text Only: Allows you to limit your search results to those articles that are available in full-text within the database.

• Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed: Limits your search results to those articles from journals that are peer-reviewed (each article is screened and ok'd by subject experts before being published).

• Suggested Topics: if you want to do a new search based on suggested subject terms, click on one of the links in this section. This is sometimes a more accurate way to search the database.
• Sort results by: default is to list the most recent articles first. You also have the option to sort by relevance (list the articles that most closely match your search, based on a complex mathematical formula).
• Find a Copy: if you do not see a full-text option for a specific result, click on the "Find a Copy" link to see if the article is available in full-text within a different database in the college's collection.
• Navigate results: at the bottom of the set of displayed results you can changed the number displayed at once (up to 30) or move to additional sets of results if available.

• Print: reformats the article (including the full-text if available in HTML) which will allow you to select print options and send the document to your printer.
• Email: options to send the citation, abstract and or full-text if available. You can also format the citation in MLA or APA format for compiling a bibliography.
• Mark Document/Marked list: click in the check box to mark the citation for later viewing or printing. Click the "Marked List" link (in the green tab area above the article) to view all the articles you have marked. There are options there for printing (to print full-text you must use "Print" from within a specific article), email, etc.
• ArticleLinker: if the article is not available in fulltext in ProQuest, click on this icon to automatically search to see if it is available elsewhere within the library's research database collections.
• Additional Searching: if you click on any of the links within the citation (author, publication title, subjects) you can generate a new search on that specific author, title, person, etc.