Just in case the resources on other pages of this guide are insufficient, you could also try searching in trade journals.
Trade journals are publications (magazines or newspapers) aimed at a specific industry, profession or market. Usually the publication's title says who is the intended audience (e.g. Contractor, Bridges, RN).
Trade journal articles usually ...
– Are written by people who work in or specialize in a particular industry / profession, but are not scholars
– Provide current news and information about the industry and the companies in it
For better results when searching in both trade and news articles, use search techniques beyond the Boolean OR and AND commands: use proximity commands and truncation also.
Some of these databases contain more than just trade journal articles, some scholarly, some popular, even some newswires. But their strength is in their coverage of the trades.
These commands tell the search engine to find two words near each other, separated by a maximum number of words. The search terms will be retrieved regardless of the order they're in.
➤ Search within the full-text of articles (not the default) for better results.
➤ Especially useful for searching in news and trade articles.
These commands are very useful! Here are two scenarios:
– commercials aired during recent superbowls
– superbowl LVII commercials
– commercials from superbowl 57
ProQuest command: near/N – matthew near/3 levatich |
Ebsco command: nN – ajita n3 rajendra |
Nexis Uni command: near/N – ursula near/3 burns |
NewsBank command: nearN – selena near3 gomez |
Truncation just means that you shorten a search word so that the search engine will retrieve variations of that search word. You type fewer words and tell the search engine to do the work! The asterisk (*) is the truncation symbol for most platforms.
➤ Search within the full-text of articles (not the default) for better results.
➤ Especially useful for searching in news and trade articles.
Works in ProQuest, Ebsco, Nexis Uni, NewsBank and Gale databases:
Here are examples that show how to format a search and spell out what will be retrieved:
educat* retrieves: educate, educated, educates, educating, education, educator, educators
govern* retrieves: govern, governed, governing, government, governments, governor, governors, governs
– Requires a root 'word' of 3 letters minimum
– Works better with a root of 4 or 5 letters (that is, will retrieve more relevant keywords)
– Cannot be used on the left side (beginning) of the root word
Wild card characters allow more control than simple truncation: for example, they can be used for spelling variations (woman vs. women; color vs. colour), or for limited truncation (for example, adaptor or adapted or adapts, but not adaptation or adapting).
But there is NO standardization among database platforms, so check the help pages for each platform you use! Characters used as wild cards include: the asterisk (*), the question mark (?), the number or pound sign (#), and even the exclamation point (!).