USING WILSONWEB DATABASES

To search any WilsonWeb databases follow these steps:

1. Link to the WilsonWeb site at http://hwwilsonweb.com.
If you are accessing the WilsonWeb site from off campus, go to step 2.
If you are accessing the WilsonWeb site from any computer on campus, skip to step 3 (no longin is necessary).

2. When the login screen is displayed, click on the Login button; then enter the User name and password supplied to you in class and click on the Login button.

3. Select OmniFile Fulltext Mega by clicking in the selection box to left of the title. (The OmniFile Fulltext Mega database combines the following subject-specific databases: Education Full Text, General Science Full Text, Humanities Full Text, Readers' Guide Full Text, Social Sciences Full Text and Wilson Business Full Text). See below for other database choices.

4. Click the Search button at the top right or bottom of the page.

5. Click in the "Subject" box to select a search of subject words and click in the "Words Anywhere" box to deselect a search of all words anywhere in any record. (If you find very few or no records by searching subject words, you can revise your search by selecting "Words Anywhere" for a subsequent search.)

6. Click in the search box and type in search term(s) for your first concept and then click the "Search Now" button or press Enter. If you have more than one search term for the same concept, type OR between the terms.
Example: GENETIC ENGINEERING OR BIOTECHNOLOGY

7. Repeat steps 4 - 6 for each additional concept.

8. Click the History button at the top right (or bottom) of the page.

9. Review the results for your previous searches, noting the set number for each concept. To find citations dealing with both your first concept and your second concept, click in the "Include" box to the left of #1 and #2 , and then click on Combine (in "Combine searches using AND") below the Search History table.
Follow the same procedure to further limit your search by "ANDing" any additional sets you have previously created. Example: If you have 3 concepts, click in the "Include" box to the left of #3 and #4 to find citations dealing with your first and second concept (#4) and your third concept (#3).

10. After submitting a search, a list of all of the records found for that search will be displayed, with up to 10 records shown on each Web page. To display the next 10 records, click on the Next 10 box at the bottom (or top) of each page.

11. To display only the records on the list that include the full text of the article, click the Full Text Only button that is near the top of each page of any list of records.

12. To display only the records on the list that are from peer-reviewed journals, click the Peer Reviewed button that is near the top of each page of any list of records.

13. When you see any article on the list that you think is very relevant to your research topic, you can click on any of the Descriptors (subject headings)-- green underlined links listed at the end of each record--to display all of the records for that subject. This is a very good method to find additional articles on topics that are similar to the first article.

14. To display the full text of any record that includes the article's text, click on the green underlined words: Full Text HTML at the top of the record.
- To print the article, click the print icon on the Netscape toolbar (or use the print command for any other browser program you may be using).
- To save the article to disk, use your browser's "Save as" or "Save" command. Remember to save the file with a filename ending with ".txt".
- To return to the list of records, click the Back button on the browser toolbar.

15. To "mark" (select) records that you want to either display separately, print or download, click on the selection box at the top left of each entry.

16. To display just the records you have marked, click on the "Show Marked" button at the top of each page.

17. To print the marked records as a list, click the Print... box at the top (or bottom) of each page; then click the Display for Print button. The selected records plus your search history will then be displayed. You can then use your browser's print command to print out the displayed information.

*For further research, other databases that are available to SMCCCD students on WilsonWeb are:

• Wilson Biographies (for biographical research)
• Book Review Digest (for finding book review articles)
• Applied Science & Technology Index (citations to articles in applied science and technology journals, no abstracts or full text)
• Readers Guide Abstracts FT (abstracts and full text of articles from popular magazines)

Choose any of the databases above by clicking in the selection box to left of each title.

Logical Operators: AND OR NOT

Truncation/Wild Cards:

* (matches any number of characters)

(Use * after the word root to find all words beginning with the same root. e.g. VEGETA* finds citations referring to "vegetable", "vegetables", "vegetation", "vegetarian", etc.)

? matches one or no characters (e.g. WOM?N finds "woman" or "women"; COLO?R finds "color" or "colour")

Field Searching:

To limit search terms to a specific field ("Words Anywhere" is the default),
select a specific field from the search page choices:

• In "Search" mode use the check box field choices--Subject, Title or Author
• In "Search Plus" mode use the pull-down window field choices--Subject, Title, Author, Journal/Source or ISSN)
  

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These materials may be used for educational purposes if you inform and credit the author and cite the source as: LSCI 105 Online Research. All commercial rights are reserved. To contact the author, send comments or suggestions to: Eric Brenner at brenner@smcccd.cc.ca.us