ProQuest

What is ProQuest?

ProQuest is a collection of journal indexes covering a wide range of disciplines. At least half of the articles are available in full-text. ProQuest provides international coverage, although there is a marked bias towards US content. The collection has particular strengths in psychology, education, nursing, business and the health sciences.

Getting started

ProQuest is available from the University Library page. Use your web browser to go to
http://www.une.edu.au/library.

Choose Most popular databases from the Databases drop-down menu.
Select ProQuest from the list.
Enter your UNE username and password before proceeding.

Search strategies

The first page you see will be the Advanced Search screen. Type a keyword or "phrase" in the first search box and click on the Search button. Use quotation marks to indicate a phrase.

Varying your search

If you have too many results, modify your search. The easiest way is to scroll down to the bottom of your Search Results screen. Here you find a duplicate of your search, complete with your original keywords. Modify your search by adding keywords in the additional Search boxes. Separate each keyword with the appropriate Boolean operators (AND, OR, or AND NOT) from the pull-down menus on the left. Examples are:

internet AND "web design" narrows your search, finding only those articles which mention both the Internet and Web design.
web OR internet widens your search by including articles which refer to the Web or the Internet or both.
web AND NOT arachnida narrows your search, excluding articles which refer to arachnida (spiders).

Truncation and Wildcards

You can search for different forms of the same word or for words with different spellings using truncation and wildcards.

The symbol * stands for different endings of the same basic word. nurs* will find articles containing the words nurse, nurses and nursing (as well as nursery or nurseries, so be careful).
The ? symbol is a wildcard used to replace any single character in a word. organi?ation will find both organization and organisation.

Search in particular fields

The pull-down menu to the right of each search box allows you to restrict your keyword search to particular fields in the record for each article. The default is Citation and abstract. If you choose Article text, every word in the article will be included, resulting in a broader but less focused search.
Use Advanced Search to find a known article. For example, if you want to find the article by Barbara Hanawalt on "Women and the household economy in pre-industrial Europe" in the Journal of Women's History, you can use the following search:

hanawalt (Author) AND "women and the household economy" (Article title) AND "journal of women's history" (Publication title).

Date range

You can select the date range for your search. Choose from a specified number of days or months or type your preferred dates.

Other ways to limit your search

Clicking in the box next to the words Full text articles only restricts your search to articles in full-text.
Ticking the box Scholarly journals, including peer-reviewed finds articles from academic and quality publications.
More Search Options allows you to limit a search to particular article types or to restrict a search by ProQuest-specific fields such as subject or companies.
Restrict to helpful, relevant databases by clicking on Select multiple databases link.

Smart search

At the top of the results screen are Suggested Topics and Suggested Publications.

Suggested Topics are new searches suggested by your keywords. Click on one to see a list of matching articles.
Suggested Publications are journals containing articles relevant to your search. Click on a publication title to go to the Publication Search page, where you can select a particular issue or search for keywords within the publication.

Publication search

Use this to discover if the journal or journal issue you require is available in full-text or only as a citation/abstract. Click on the Publication Search tab at the top of the ProQuest screen. Enter all or part of the journal name in the Search box and click on the Search button.

Viewing records

Your results appear as a list of relevant articles. You can choose to see up to 30 references per page by using the pull-down menu at the bottom right of your results. Most articles can be viewed in multiple formats. The available formats are indicated by specific icons:

Full Text: includes the full contents of the article in plain text. This format excludes any illustrations or diagrams present in the original article.
Text + Graphics: provides the citation, abstract and full-text of the article along with any graphics.
Page Image - PDF: provides scanned page images of the article as originally published. These images are in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format. This format is the best one to use for correct referencing in your writing.

To view an article, click on the article title or your preferred format icon. If there is no format icon, only an abstract is available. In this case, you should click on the Find it button

. A window will appear allowing you to determine if the full text of the article is available elsewhere in paper or electronic form.

Marking records

If you are interested in a number of articles, you can make a list by clicking in the check boxes to the left of each citation. To see the articles you have marked, click the Marked List tab at the top of the ProQuest screen. This takes you to a screen which gives you the option to:

print a list of articles as a bibliography (citations and/or abstracts)
email the full-text of the articles.
export the citations in a format suitable for EndNote.

If you want to keep a record of your search strategy, click on the My Research Summary tab.

Printing, emailing and saving

To print, click on the Print button above the article title (when in Full Text or Text+Graphics) or the Print icon on the Adobe Acrobat Reader toolbar (in Page Image - PDF).
To email an article, click the Email button at the top of the Article View screen. Click on the Full Text button and then the Plain text button. After entering your full email address (eg username@une.edu.au), click the Send Email button. A note appears confirming that your email has been sent.
To save an article to a disk or your hard drive in HTML format, view the article in Full Text or Text+Graphics and then click on Print. Instead of printing, click on the Cancel button. Then choose Save As from Internet Explorer's File menu.
To save the article in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format, click on the Save icon on the Acrobat Reader toolbar when in Page Image - PDF. Remember to save the new file with a .pdf file extension.

Logging out

Leave ProQuest by choosing the UNE University Library link at the top right of the ProQuest screen or by clicking on the Home button on your Web browser.