Vocational Studies Complete: Advanced Searching
The advanced search function is very powerful. You can use it to create structured queries, where you apply limiters before searching instead of after. Like the search results page, it can look a bit complicated. Let's break it down.
It consists of two sections:
- Search in specific fields using Boolean operators
- The search limiter options (that you can see in the basic search if you click Search Options)
Field Searching
You can choose a specific field in which to search. Though some fields are perhaps more useful than others. You are perhaps unlikely to use an ISSN, an ISBN or an EBSCO internal accession number as a search term. Field searching is useful for reducing the number of results if you find yourself getting too many resul5ts to manage.
You can search in multiple fields using the Boolean Operators AND, OR and NOT to combine search terms. For example, you could search for Kelly (Author) AND sales "management" (Title) to find all items with "sales management" in the title and someone named Kelly as an author.
Field searching and Boolean Operators are a very powerful combination but might be tricky to get right.
Search Options
The search limiting options are the same as those described on the Basic Search page
Search Modes and Expanders
- Boolean/Phrase (default) - supports any Boolean searching or exact phrase searching
- Find all my search terms - A Boolean AND search
- Find any of my search terms - A Boolean OR search
- SmartText Searching - You can copy and paste large chunks of text to search for results and behind the scenes EBSCO WILL convert your text into what it thinks are the best search terms to use
- Apply related words - Let EBSCO include in your search plurals and what it thinks are synonyms of your search terms
- Also search within the full-text of the article - as it says, search in full-text as well as title, abstract, keywords etc.
- Apply equivalent subjects - Let EBSCO include in your search subject terms that are related to your search terms
Limit Your Results
- Full-Text - limit your results to only those for which the full-text of the article is available
- Peer-Review - limit your results to only those which have been peer-reviewed, so, scholarly material only
- Publication Date - limit your results to those published between certain dates
- Publication - limit to specific publication
- Publication type - limit to specific type of information source (books, magazines, trade publications etc)
- Document type - limit to specific types of articles (e.g., book review, interview, poem etc)
- Number of pages - limit to shorr articles or long articles! Three options
- equal to
- less than (for short articles)
- greater than (for long articles)
- Cover story - limit your results to those articles that were featured as cover stories
- Image quick view - limit your results to those articles that have image thumbnails available, and you can further limit by type of image
- Lexile Reading Level - search for results by the level of their reading complexity (the higher the score, the more complex the item)
- PDF Full-text/ Limit results to those where full-text is available as a downloadable pdf
Obviously, some of these limiters are more useful than others and If you're not comfortable using the advanced search options or find it all a bit complicated to use, then don't! Stick to the basic search and maybe think about only using the full-text and peer-reviewed limiters if you need to.
