The search results page contains a lot of information, let's break that down.

Don't worry it will all make sense! There are three columns

Features of the search results page have been numbered to better describe what each bit means

1. The search box itself
2. The total number of results for the search query
3. Sort and limiting options (see below)
4. Tick box to select all results on the page (to use with 6 below)
5. Tick box to select individual item (to use with 6 below)
6. Actions you can take with selected items
   • Create a citation record for the item to include in your reference list
   • Send the item by email
   • Save the item to My Research
   • All save options (including print item and export to referencing software)
7. Source type (always Historical Newspaper)
8. The item detail:
   • Tile
   • Author
   • Publication
   • Date
   • Pages

   The item detail allows you to:

   • View the abstract and item details
   • View the full-text as HTML (if available)
   • View the full-text as PDF (if available)
9. Search options
   • Modify your search - go back to the search page and change or modify your search terms
   • Rerun a previous search - Click this to access previous searches you have done during this session and choose one to run over again
10. Various search options
    • Save search. Click on the drop down to:
      • Save search query to My Research
      • Create an alert to have new search results sent to you by email
      • Create an RSS feed
      • Create a link to this search so you can easily access it again
11. Items options (the same as 6, above - cite, email or save to your personal account)

Some of these options will be discussed in more detail in the Personalisation page

Sorting

There are three ways of sorting results:

Relevance

ProQuest uses an algorithm (a set of instructions for solving a problem or accomplishing a task) to determine what it thinks are the most relevant results to your search query, so for example if you search for 'healthy eating' (that is healthy and eating), the algorithm is likely to show articles that have the phrase "healthy eating" in the title, abstract or list of keywords, because it "thinks" that these will be most relevant to your search. It's up to you to decide that, however.

Limiters

if you get too many results, the limiters in the left-hand column are a good way of reducing the numbers of results to a more manageable level. You can limit by:

Publication Date

You can enter a date range to narrow your search by publication date or you can click on one of the columns to see results from a particular decade

Publication Title

You can search for items within a particular publication (for example, The Irish Tomes, or the Weekly Irish Times). Click on Publication Title to see a list of titles

Click on a title to limit results to that individual title. Click on More > to see more titles

Document Type

You can limit by the type of article. 

Click on a document type to limit your results to show only that document type. Click on More >  to see other document types