Step by Step with Lots of ProQuest Databases

ProQuest databases open the door to articles on nearly every subject. If your professor asks you for credible or scholarly journals, ProQuest databases may be for you. This introduces Proquest databases step by step.

1) First, decide which ProQuest database is for you. Unlike EBSCOHost Academic Search Complete, ProQuest spreads its collection across a variety of databases, leaving you with a choice.

If your paper is about...

Databases

Fine arts or the humanities.

Art Bibliographies Modern Arts and Humanities Database

Public policy, moral, ethical, or social issues.

Research Library Proquest Social Sciences Premium Collection News and Newspapers Political Science Database

Health, public health, medicine, nursing, medical ethics.

Health and Medical Collection BiologicalDatabase Proquest Social Sciences Premium Collection

Business or economics

ABI Inform Research Library Proquest Social Sciences Premium Collection

Plants, animals, pollution, or environmental issues

Research Library Environmental Science Collection Biological Database

Computers, technology, physical sciences

Research Library Science Database

2) Scroll down to the alphabet list below the big search box on the library web page.

3) Select the first letter of your database and click it.

4) Scroll down to your database and select it.

5) Next, put your search into a format the database best understands.

Most college level topics are either a phrase or a combination of two ideas or both. "Quotes" bind proper names or phrases together. If some or all of your topic loses its meaning when you change the word order, bind it with "quotes."

AND puts two ideas together and gives you the overlap between them. It must be in ALL UPPER CASE to do its magic.

If your topic is the internet of things' safety, your search might look like.

security AND "internet of things"

6) Type your search into ProQuest's search box and click the turquoise button with the magnifying glass on it.

7) ProQuest presents results in groups of twenty. You can scroll through them and you can move between pages with the Next and Previous Page links at the bottom of the page.

8) To improve your results, restrict them to only Scholarly Journals and Magazines by adjusting the Source Type facet on the left side of the page. Excluding wire feeds and dissertations also improves search results.

9) To eliminate older articles, you can modify the date range on the Publication Date facet by moving its slider.

10) When you find an article you like, click on its blue title or PDF link

11) Your article has tabs on top. An article's PDF tab gives it in PDF rather than full text.

An article's Abstract and Details tab provides more information about it so you can find more like it.

12) You can print, email or save your article by clicking one of the icons in the box on the right.

13) Clicking the Cite icon in the box on the right gives you a choice of formats including MLA 8. Of course, no computer citation is perfect, but you can always edit.

14) To adjust your search, edit it in the big box on the top of the result list. Click the Back to Results list link to get to the box if you are looking at an article.

15) To start a new search, click Basic Search or Advanced Search in the turquoise ribbon at the top of the window.