Welcome to OSearch for OhioLINK research databases. These databases are "citation" databases, which means that they contain records that cite, or describe, articles in journals, books, or chapters or parts of books or other documents. When the full text of an article is available electronically, the citation links to the full text. Otherwise, use your library's collection or OhioLINK borrowing to retrieve the actual journal articles or books.
| Use a meaningful word or phrase | cryptography
charter schools |
| Avoid terms that have little meaning out of context or are too broad to be useful | too broad : development
better: sustainable development and china |
| Type two or more words together for a phrase of adjacent words | freedom of association |
| Use AND to find both words, whether adjacent or not | winter and landscape |
| Use OR for either word | hurricanes or typhoons |
| Use NOT to exclude a word | columbus not christopher |
| Mix words and phrases | organic farming and ohio |
| Mix operators | (online or internet) and voting |
| Use $ for truncation | greek myth$ |
| Omit punctuation | st louis worlds fair |
| Capitalization doesn't matter (NAFTA, Nafta, or nafta) | nafta |
| All Fields | Words anywhere — title, abstract, author, subject, etc. Searching All Fields is easy but may retrieve documents where your words happen to occur but are not what the document is really about. | welfare reform and ohio in All Fields |
| Author Name | Any word in the author's name; put lastname first | chesnick in Author Name
goodman ellen in Author Name silvestri s$ in Author Name |
| Article/Book Title | Any word or phrase in the title of the article or book | early phonics instruction in Article Title |
| Journal Title | Any word or phrase in the journal in which the article is published | journal of art therapy in Journal Title |
| Subject | Official vocabulary used by professional indexers to describe concepts in this database. Searching by Subject requires that you know the official terminology but guarantees that the document is really about this topic. | cosmic dust in Subject
beethoven ludwig van in Subject |
| Abstract | Any word or phrase in the abstract, except omit stopwords | care and (around clock) in Abstract |
| Use two or more boxes to combine words from more than one region | biodiversity and climate change in All
Fields And science in Journal Title skaggs in Author Name And battle of lake erie in Article Title paulson george in Author Name Not archives of neurology in Journal Title |
In addition to search boxes on the Search Form itself, a simple
search box displays at the top of results. You can use this box to
submit a new search in the entire database or thesaurus, or to
combine a second search with the current results.
From your search results, Find It looks for full text of the journal article. If the full text is found online, Find It links you to it. Our full-text sources include:
Some databases also link to Attached Full Text built-in with that database.
If full text is not online, check whether your library owns the journal in print, microform, etc. If not, ask your library staff about interlibrary loan.
If the item is a book, check whether your library owns it. If your library doesn't own a copy but other OhioLINK libraries do, you may be able to request a loan from another library. Otherwise, ask your library staff about interlibrary loan.
Each record displays a persistent URL, or bookmark, that you can copy to return directly to that record in the future. Display the Full Record and then look for the record's control number.
Link to Limit Options to see ways to restrict or narrow your search. Common limits are: Language, Year, and Type of Publication (such as feature article, review article, book, or conference report).
Latest Update: Limits the search to just the most recent records distributed by the database producer. For example, if the database is updated monthly, this finds the articles on your topic that are new in the last month.
Also under Limit Options are choices for sorting the results, and how many per page.
Most Recent Records First: The fastest option, arranges results "last in, first out" — records added to the database most recently display first. This generally displays the newest citations first.
Relevance: Arranges citations in order of the frequency of occurrence of your search term. For example, if you search eutrophication, citations with the highest number of occurrences of the word eutrophication are listed first. Relevancy ranking is system resource intensive and may take a long time to process. This option is best reserved for searches on very precise terms that yield limited results.
Auto Search for Plurals is also under Limit Options. Use Auto Plurals to find both singular and plural word forms automatically. Auto Plurals applies to every word in your search statement; it finds both the "s" form and also complex plurals. For example:
| Auto Search for Plurals | woman and college | finds woman, woman's, women, or women's, and college or colleges |
July 2005