Assignment 1C: Expanded Academic ASAP
Taryn Brown
February 22, 2005
LIS5703: Information Organization
Assignment 1C: Expanded Academic ASAP
1. Open the Expanded Academic ASAP. Click Title List. What does Expanded Academic ASAP on InfoTrac Web provide?
The Title List provides an alphabetical listing of all of the journals and magazines that they have in their database. With each listing, their ISSN appears next to it and also provides start and end dates (if applicable) for indexing of the journal. If there is nothing filled in for the end date, it generally means that the indexing is current. Also, next to each journal are columns titled “FT start” and “FT end”. These are the publication dates for full-text articles of the journals that appear in Expanded Academic ASAP. For example, an FT start of 1/1999 means that articles appearing in the January, 1999 issue or later are full-text in the database. An FT end date means the date that full-text articles on or after the date are not accessible through this database. An FT end field that is blank means again, that the full-text access is through the present. If nothing is filled in either the FT start or end, this means that Expanded Academic ASAP database does not carry full-text articles for the selected journals. The final two columns in the title list are “Image Start” and “Image End”. The dates under these two columns indicate if images are available for the selected journal. If both columns are blank, that means images are not available for the journal. If just the “image start” column has a value, then the images are through the current publication date of the selected journal. There will not be anything in any of the end fields (index, FT, and image) if there is not a value of the corresponding start fields.
2. Close this window. Click Subject Guide and then Help-Search. Describe wildcards.
First, I got to learn about the wildcards by clicking on Help index within the Help-Search screen. A wildcard is a symbolic replacement for a letter or several letters in a word. In Expanded Academic ASAP, there are several symbols that are used for wildcards. These symbols are: an asterisk (*), a question mark (?), and an exclamation point (!). An asterisk can stand for several letters, usually meant to find different endings of the base of a word. For example, when discuss* is searched, results will appear with the words discuss, discussion, discussed, discussing, etc. A question mark is used to stand for one letter. This can be helpful if one does not know the spelling of something. For instance, the search red?mption would be beneficial because one may not know if it is spelled redemption, redamption, or even redimption. Also, several question marks can be used in the place of letters, such as in pre????cy. This would return results with the word pregnancy and other words that would match this search string. An exclamation point is used when the searcher is looking for a word with just one letter after it. For example, the search laugh! would return results with laugh or laughs, but not laughing or laughter.
3. What are logical operators and how are they used?
In Expanded Academic ASAP, logical operators are exactly the same as Boolean operators. The logical operators consist of the words: AND, OR, and NOT. The operator AND delivers results with both search words. For example, the search love AND marriage would return results that contain the word love and the word marriage. The operator OR delivers results with either of the search words. It can also return both search words as well. For instance, the search apricot OR tree would return results with apricot, results with tree or results with both apricot and tree. The operator NOT delivers results with one word but omits the other word. For example, a search containing the words vehicle NOT car would deliver results with the word vehicle except the ones which contain the word car.
4. Describe limiting and why it is important in searching.
Limiting in Expanded Academic ASAP allows the searcher to specify up to 10 specific journals to search in. It also allows for other options, such as limiting to articles with text (full-text articles, not abstracts only), to refereed publications, and by date. By limiting to up to 10 journals, the database will only search for the results in the selected journals, and only articles in these journals will show up in the results screen. When limiting to articles with text, only articles that are full-text show up in the results. Limiting by refereed publications means that articles only published in scholarly publications will be returned in the results. When one limits by the date that means that only articles published between, before, or after the specified dates will be returned. For example, a search that was performed to limiting the date to between January 1, 1999 and December 31, 2001 will return results published between January 1, 1999 and December 31, 2001. A search that was performed by limiting the date to before August 21, 1996 means that results will be returned with publication dates of August 20, 1996 and earlier. A search that was performed by limiting the date to after September 24, 1991 means that results that were published on September 25, 1991 or later will be returned.
5. Go to the Subject guide search. Search for Shakespeare. How many articles can be viewed? Click view. Is Hamlet available in full-text? The Tempest? NEA takes Shakespeare on tour? Be careful about what you are seeing here!
Under Shakespeare, there are 28 articles that can be viewed. Hamlet is not available in full-text. The Tempest is not available full-text, either. NEA takes Shakespeare on tour is available in full-text, however. The results titled Hamlet and The Tempest are not Shakespeare’s plays, as one may assume. These are actually theater reviews.
6. Go back to the subject search. Search for Shakespeer (Note spelling). What are the results? Briefly describe if the results help, or not, and why.
The results that are displayed is entitled a Spell List. The screen states that “InfoTrac could find no matches for your word or words. Choose an alternative”. The Spell list contains approximately 90 words that would deliver some sort of result that are spelled in an alphabetical listing from the word “Shakespeer”. There is also a large red dot next to the word Shakesperian, which is the word that would come alphabetically after Shakespeer, if it had delivered results. I think that the results in the form of a spell list help. However, if I was running that database, I would probably do something like Yahoo! does and put on the top “Did you mean Shakespeare?”. I think that the Spell list helps because it lets the user see that most likely, they misspelled the word and they can figure out the correct spelling, which is Shakespeare by looking at the list.
7. Go back to subject search. Search for Shakespe*r. How many articles are there for Shakespear, William? Search for Shakesp*re. How many articles for Shakespeare, William? What made the difference? Is it substantial and why?
There are 5 articles for Shakespear, William. There are 5878 articles under Shakespeare, William. This is a substantial difference. The difference was in the spelling and placement of the wildcard. William Shakespear and William Shakespeare are two different subjects. I think that the results with William Shakespear are probably just misspellings of William Shakespeare. It is amazing what a small difference what spelling and wildcard usage makes in a search statement.
8. Go back to the search page and select Relevance search. Search for Shakespeare. Go back to the search page (back button or select search). Look at the History at the bottom of the page. Is the original subject search still there? Choose Start over from the left-hand column on the page. Briefly describe how these two features, History and Start Over, might aid a user in searching a database? (Are they useful, confusing, etc.?) If you cannot get this question to work right because you’ve done the assignment in snatches, you should run through the first questions again quickly to arrive here.
Yes, my original search history was there. However, I had a problem with this question at first. I did not do this portion of the assignment in snatches; however, the first time I came to this question I only had my original subject search history, not the others after that. I only had the one with 28 results. I figured out why as I went through the searches 2 more times. It was because in my original wildcard searches, I did not click on view next to the number of articles that the results came up with. So I clicked on view, and that is how my history appeared. The history feature is beneficial to users searching a database because, if someone is having trouble finding their results and they use several different queries, they can see which queries worked and which ones did not work. I think that Expanded Academic ASAP’s history feature is beneficial to users. On the other hand, I think that the Start Over feature may be confusing to the average user. This is because they may confuse the start over button with the “Back to Search…” button. The start over feature erases all the user’s search history and acts like it is a brand new search, that the user has never been to search the database before.
9. Choose Journal Search. Select Help-Search. What are stop words? Can you use them in this database? Why or why not?
Stop words are very small words that are not indexed in a database. Examples of stop words are:and, a, and the. Stop words are able to be used in Expanded Academic ASAP because the site even states that “You can leave in words such as the and a even though these are stop words and are not indexed. InfoTrac knows how to search as if stop words weren't there”. It seems that this database is smart enough to perform the search accurately even if the stop words are in the search query.
Email: tbrown99@comcast.net