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 options (see below)
4. Limiter options (see below)
5. Tick box to select all results on the page (to use with 12 below)
6. Tick box to select individual item (to use with 12 below)
7. Source type
8. Item title - click to see item record
9. Various item options: You can:
   • View the abstract and item details
   • View the full-text as HTML (if available)
   • View the full-text as PDF (if available)
   • See the item's reference list
10. 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
    • 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. 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)

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:

Source Type

You can limit your search to certain source types, such as books, scholarly articles, magazines, trades publications, etc.

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

Creative Commons Licence

Creative Commons licences are explained in detail in the Open Educational Resources section, but basically allow authors to fine-tune what rights they retain over their rights and what users are allowed to do with their works. Some licences give permission to modify works or use them commercially

Publication Title

You can search for items within a particular publication

Document Type

You can limit by the type of document - similar to Source Type

Subject

Some articles come with author-supplied keywords or ProQuest-generated that describe the content of the article

Location

This can be used to limit results linked to a specific geographic location - like Ireland

Language

Used to limit results to a specified language. Perhaps only useful if English is not your first language and you are looking for results in your first language.

Other Limiters

There are some other limiters, but they are of limited use. You can use Companies/Organisations to limit results to those written by or about specific companies and People limits results to those that mention or about are specific people.

What Limiters to Use?

The best limiters are probably

Most content should have full-text available, so selecting that as a limiter should make little difference to the number of results retrieved