Military and Government Collection
This tutorial should answer:
- What is the most effective way of searching the Millitary and Government Collection index?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the index?
- What are some ways of searching that might not be immediately clear to searchers?
The collection provides access to publications, such as:
- Academic Journals
- Defense Monitor, Armed Forces and Society, Military Medicin
- Periodicals
- Time, Newsweek, National Review, Progressive
- Special Publications
- FDCH Press Releases, FDCH Congressional Testimony, Aviation Week and Space Technology
Search features
Boolean searching
Search for multiple terms in the same search by entering AND, OR, or NOT to separate terms in a field. If someone you wanted information on sexual harassment in the Navy, you might search
Navy AND sexual harassment
Grouping with Parenthesis
If you use parenthesis, the terms within the parenthesis will be searched before the entire field, resulting in a more precise search
(Navy AND sexual harassment) NOT (tailhook OR Stumpf)
Proximity
You can search for terms that are near one another by using the near operator. If you search for tailhook N10 sexual harassment you will find instances where “tailhook” is found at least 10 words away from “sexual harassment.”
Refine or expand your search
After you complete your search, one easy way to eliminate or expand your search is to consult the “refine search” tab, where you can limit the results to those with, for example, full text available, or illustrations present. You can also expand your search to look through full text
Default Fields
If you’d like to search in a hurry, without selecting specific fields to search the automatically selected “default fields” which search your selected terms in the for:
- All Authors
- All Subjects
- All Keywords
- All Title Info
- All Abstracts
Search Results reminder: Results are returned sorted by date. They can also be sorted by source or relevance.
Searchable Fields
If you click on the drop down menu you will find many different fields to use if you don’t want to use the default field. They do not, however provide all the field one can search. Try out these by entering the two digit code and your term.
AS |
Enter AS Y to restrict your search to results with author supplied abstracts |
CS |
Enter CS Y to restrict your search to only those documents that are a cover story. Also available under the “refine search” tab. |
DT |
To find items from a specific date, search in the format YYYYMMDD, as in DT 20010911. Search for months in the form YYYYMM |
JN,
VI,
IP
|
To find all the articles from a specific issue of a journal, use the Journal Name, Volume Number, and Issue Number codes. |
PZ |
To search for a document type, enter the PZ code before the type of document you want to retrieve, such as PZ article or PZ speech. |
PG |
If you want articles of a specific length, use this code and the “>” and “<“ symbols. For example, if you want your results to have between 3 and 7 pages, enter PG >3 AND PG <7 |
RV |
To restrict the results of your search to those from a peer reviewed journal, enter RV Y. |
One of the most useful resources for those using the EBSCOhost is the My EBSCO. Using this feature one can
- Save Searches
- Save Articles
- Set preferences
- Have updates of your favorite searches delivered to your email
The Index:
Searching the Index Alphabetically
To effectively search the subject feature of the Military and Government collection it is important to understand how to use the index, a listing of the subject headings that can be used in the database. There are two ways to find subjects in the index: searching by relevancy or alphabetically. Let’s say you want to use the “army” subject heading while doing a search. First, you might search alphabetically for “army.” You will fnd the term “army” does not appear in the index; instead you are pointed towards “armies.” But when you click on “armies” you are neither sent to the index listing for “armies,” not does the subject search for the term begin. This is a mistake in the system to watch out for. If you want to use the “armies” term, you must type it into the alphabetical searching field. When you find the “armies” entry you may either select it or consider one of the selected narrower terms. If you check the box, you can either consider yourself satisfied with searching only the “armies” subject heading or pick more. When you have finished selecting all the subjects you want to search, hit search and you will be returned to the search page with the subject search completed, with “OR” between them.
Searching the Index by Relevancy
The index can also be searched by relevancy, but beware, the most relevant results do not always appear first. For example, if one searches for “Clinton, Bill” (or “Bill Clinton”) the entry for former president is the fourth item received. If one enters “USMC” one finds no entry for the US Marine Corps.
Mistakes in the Index
Be aware of sloppy mistakes in the index, such as names filed under the first name rather than the last (Bill, Clinton) |
