In order to do an Advanced Search on Library Plus you will need to go directly to the database. Use the link in the box on the right to get there. Make sure you've also read the Library Plus search tips guide as this will help you when searching by explaining the function of different elements of the search.
Initially, you will see the basic search screen --> click on the Advanced Search link which is directly below the search box on that first page.
In your search boxes, type the words or phrases that you're looking for, remembering to use speech marks and/or truncation as appropriate. Always select one of the options (to the right of your search box) which let you tell the database where in the record you want it to search for your keywords i.e. article title/ abstract/ subject fields/ everywhere. When you've made your selections, click on search.
We'll use the example from the Planning tab:
You now have one set of results.
Click on the CLEAR button to the right of your search boxes and start a new search looking for Students in AB Abstract and click on search.
You now have a second set of results. Click on the CLEAR button to the right of your search boxes and start a new search.
As before, you will need to select OR, AB Abstract, and add a fourth row to get all of your terms in. Click on Search.
Then, Click on the CLEAR button to the right of your search boxes and start a new search.
Same procedure as before, only this time you don't need that fourth row as you're only looking for three key terms. Note that in this search and the previous search I put speech marks (SHIFT +2) around my phrases.
Click on the CLEAR button to the right of your search boxes.
Now we have four separate searches--some of them giving us a huge number of results (don't panic!)--and in order to reduce them to a more manageable level we need to combine those searches together and also to start applying limits.
First, we need to click on the Search History link below our search boxes; this will list all of our searches so far along with the number of results we got for each search.
When you see the list of searches displayed, you'll note the tick boxes to the left of each search. Click in the box of every search you want to add together (in this case we can tick them all) and then you need to click on the grey button at the top of the Search History that says Search with AND - this tells the database you want to combine all of these terms into one search.
You should now see a much smaller number of results, with more relevant titles, that you can work with.
There are still too many to go through at this stage, however. They're also a mix of articles, books, news reports etc. and some are available full-text and some aren't so we need to use the left-hand sidebar--where it says Refine Results--to narrow our results down a little more.
The top section of the sidebar lets us choose full-text, date range and source type (i.e. what kind of material we want - academic journal article etc.)
Tick the box for full-text
Use the slider bar under the Publication Date to change your date range so that it runs from 2010 to 2014
Tick the box to select Academic Journals
In each case, the moment you make one selection i.e. tick a box, the database will update your results based on your choice
Now go towards the bottom of the sidebar where you can see a heading for Geography. Click on that and you'll get a brief drop down list.
Don't tick any boxes here; instead, click on the Show More link. This will allow you to select more than one item and then update when you want to. Clicking on Show More will open up a dialog box in the middle of your browser window.
Tick the boxes for all the countries that apply. Make sure you scroll right to the end of the list as you may find London, England / Wales etc. on their own further down. Don't assume that because UK & Ireland/ Great Britain/ and England are at the top of the list that that's it.
When you've selected all the options you want, click on Update. Only then will the database apply your selections and present you with a new set of results.
We've still got a lot of results, but we can narrow them down a little more by selecting options from the Subject section of the sidebar. Because we will want to select more than one option we will need to click on the Show More link as we did before.
When you get the dialog box listing all of your subject options, tick all of the ones that apply to students and placements and then click on Update.
You will get a new set of results and all of the selections that you've made will be listed at the top of the sidebar. If any of those selections have an 'X' next to them it means that you can click on the 'X' and undo that particular selection.
There are still over 100 results here, but not all of them will be relevant. Some of them you can discard immediately by reading the titles of the articles and determining that they don't fit what you're looking for.
Some of them won't immediately shout to be included or excluded and you will need to click on the title of each article to get to the more detailed record which should contain an abstract (summary of the article's content) which will help you decide whether the context is correct for the research you want to do.
When you have a selection of articles that you feel are fit for purpose you can view the full-text by clicking on a range of icons.
If you see this icon below an article you want to read it means that full-text access is available and if you click on that icon it should open up immediately in either a new window or a new tab on your browser. (This means that when you've printed/ saved the article you can safely close that tab down without losing your search!)
If you see this icon--and you've ticked the full-text option in the sidebar--it means that the database is pretty certain that full-text access to the article is available and if you click on that icon you should get to the full-text in anywhere from 3 to 7 clicks. It will also open up in a new window/tab so you can close the tab down with no worries.
If you see either of these icons then it means that full-text access to the article is available and if you click on either of those icons it will open up in the same window. So don't close that window/ tab down when you're done or you will have lost your entire search.
Save or print off the articles that are of interest to you/ that match your research topic and get ready to read through them making notes not just on the subject matter, but also making note of any additional keywords related to your topic that you could also search for to bring up similar articles.
