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Last Updated: September 06, 2024

15 Minutes to Mastery: Advanced Search

Discover how Gale’s Advanced Search tools can quickly get the most relevant materials into the hands of your users in public, academic, and K-12 libraries. In this recorded webinar, we'll explore how Advanced Search can improve reference for your patrons, whether it’s getting to additional resources or refining results by reading level, content type, publication, or subject.

Duration: 15 Minutes
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Hello and welcome, everyone. Thank

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you for joining me. My name is Marian Valentine.

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I am your Gale trainer and with

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me is Stacey Knibloe, our

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senior trainer here at Gale.

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To help answer your questions in Q and A.

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We will be covering

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Q and A at the end of our 15 minute

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session as we're going to be moving quickly

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to discover how gale's advanced

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search tools can quickly help you

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get relevant materials to

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the hands of your users in public

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academic and K-12

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libraries.

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In this 15 minute Webinar, we'll learn

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how advanced search can improve reference for

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your patrons, whether it's helping them

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find additional resources or narrow

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down their search terms.

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We'll go live within a gale resource to

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explore advanced search examples

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of how to increase your search results or

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to refine your results by reading

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level, content type, publication

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or subject.

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And we'll finish out with where you can go for additional

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support. This is 15

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minutes. So stay

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with us after the session to find the answers

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to your questions.

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This session is being recorded and

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you will get a copy of the recording tomorrow so you can

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review that as well.

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The best way to learn about advanced search is

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just to go ahead and visit advanced

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search. So I'm going to

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show you my screen. You can use

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advanced search on almost all of your Gale

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products and that's going to include Gale in context

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ebooks, Onefile periodicals, and primary sources.

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Almost every Gale resource.

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We're going to start off with an example

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of Gale In Context High School.

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We've got a basic search here at the top

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(most of our students start

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with that). It's very google

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oriented. You can just type in words

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and start your search. But today we're focused

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on advanced search.

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First, a brief overview of the advanced search screen.

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You can use this to look for multiple

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search terms or

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to look for a specific subject. It's

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going to default to terms you're

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searching for in the keyword field.

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So looking at major descriptor fields,

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but perhaps you want it to be the subject

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of

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your resource

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or you're searching for something that's really difficult

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to find information on. You want to can search

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for a term within the entire document. There are

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lots of different fields to choose from,

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including the name of the work,

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if you're doing a literature

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search. Search fields can help narrow to what

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the article is about, maybe

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it's *about* a person or maybe it's content *by* a specific

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person you want to look up.

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Lots of different options with fields. You've got

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your AND OR NOT Boolean operators.

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If you're not familiar with those, you can see

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some examples with the search tips below.

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This (AND NOT) is going to make it so that you can get even

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more specific with your search results.

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Or you can use OR

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to widen your search and look for synonyms

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and similar terms.

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You've got unique limiters

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underneath those advanced search fields.

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This is going to help you narrow down your search

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even more. So we're looking at full-text documents.

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We could uncheck full-text and choose to look at citations as

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well. We could narrow to peer

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reviewed journal articles

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for college or GT

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students,

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scholars, or professional development articles.

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We can narrow

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by the publication date.

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So if we're looking for recent medical information or

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we're looking for the latest news. This can be very

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helpful.

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I love these 'content type' boxes

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and I'll show you an example of a search later.

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But this is a quick, easy way to get

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to specific 'content type' and you

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don't even need a search term to search by 'content type'.

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Below that, by 'document type'

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is going to let you get very specific.

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So if I'm looking for a science experiment,

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I can look for that type of document.

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Each one of these limiters is going to have a little information

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tab that will tell you more about

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the particular type of search we're doing.

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So don't feel like you have to memorize all of it

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right now.

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And if you're a teacher or if you

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are in public libraries and you have younger

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users,

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the 'content levels'

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are going to make it easy to get to

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particular Lexile levels, particular

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reading levels, that work with your

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students or young adults.

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These do line up to the lexile

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levels, but an easy way to

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see these is: one and two is elementary reading level,

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three is going to be middle school, four for high

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school and five above

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that high school reading level.

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So I'm searching Gale In context

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high school, we'll show you some 'content level' searches later,

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but we'll start with an advanced search and

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how you can use terms and fields to get to specific

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results. I'm going

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to change this field back to keyword and

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we'll do a before and after (of results).

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If I type in the word 'climate change', you'll

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notice it has auto-predict.

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And that will help me with spelling and

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if I select 'climate change' from here, it's

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also going to put the terms in quotation marks.

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So that's going to look specifically

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for climate followed by change.

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In that order.

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If I do a keyword search on 'climate change,'

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you'll notice that I find a lot of results,

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many different content types.

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I do have the option to filter over here

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on the right. But since we're in advanced

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search, we're going to focus on

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filtering and narrowing results down

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with our advanced search options.

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I can either click 'revise search' right

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here, I can click back in my browser to clear

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my search, but I'm going to go to 'search history'

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in this example because it really helps you see

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the number of results for my search terms.

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So I did a keyword search for 'climate change'

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and I got

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68,000 results.

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I'm going to revise that to narrow it

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down. By 'revising,'

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I've kept my search terms and keyword field search.

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Now I'd like to be more

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specific, I want 'climate change' to

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be the subject

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of my article (not just mentioned)

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and I'm going to add

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a couple of search terms to make it even

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more narrow.

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I'd also like the word pollution to be

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in there and

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I'd like to talk about plastic

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pollution.

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Now you'll notice that auto-predict gives me plastic, plastics, plasticity.

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I can throw in a wildcard here

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So this asterisk

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is going to be considered a wildcard. You can also

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use a question mark or exclamation point.

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It's going to look for everything that starts

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with plastic

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and I would like plastic* to be just somewhere

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in the 'entire document'.

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So I'm searching multiple terms and a couple of different fields

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(subject, keyword, entire document) to narrow my results.

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Now we can see we've gotten very specific,

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we see all of our search terms right here

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and the option to revise.

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I'm looking at the subject of 'climate

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change' with the keyword of pollution

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that mentions plastic in the document.

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Very easy to share out these search

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results

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by going to 'get link'.

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So you don't have to tell your students all the different

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terms you used to get there, you can just

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use 'get link' to share your results.

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And if we look at my 'search history', you can see,

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I went from 68,000 results

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to 83 very specific

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results. I'll go ahead

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and clear my search history

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and show you one other thing in advanced search

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within Gale In context high school

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before I show you something unique within your

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OneFile periodical resources.

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So we just did multiple search terms

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and search fields at the top

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to get very specific. You can use

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Advanced Search to do a broad search as well.

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We know that we can use OR to

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look for synonyms,

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climate change

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OR global warming, for

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example.

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We can also use these limiters down here

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to either narrow or expand our search.

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This is very powerful. If you have

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a student who's coming in who's looking for,

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say, a primary source document.

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They don't know which one, they just

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know that they have to do a

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report on a primary source

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that's a speech.

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I can click 'primary sources',

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narrow down

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to the 'document type': speeches.

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And maybe that student is at a different reading level

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than high school.

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I'm going to refine results to say

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level three for Middle School

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And two for Upper Elementary.

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We'll include four for high school.

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So I've narrowed it down by primary sources,

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that are speeches, in their reading level,

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but I haven't added any search terms.

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Quick, Easy way to get to content. Just do

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a search here, without search terms,

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I now have 329 primary

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sources and again, the ability to filter

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and narrow it down over on the right.

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If I have decided that maybe I don't

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need that reading level, I can just

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click the X to remove the filter that

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I had added and get all of

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my results (primary sources: speeches)

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Now, all of these Advanced Searches

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are going to look similar within your Gale resources.

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Advanced Search is right here under the basic search.

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I'm showing you this next one in Gale General Onefile because

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there's something unique you can do within your Onefile periodical

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resources.

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When I do an advanced search

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In a Gale Onefile product,

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it is really helpful to be able to repeat

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the search. Not just get the search

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results but actually get alerts without

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rewriting my search. You'll notice that the search

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term and

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fields look the same.

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We may have some additional fields that we can look

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through but very similar.

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We still got all of our Boolean operators,

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our checkboxes to limit by peer-reviewed,

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and document type.

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But when I do a search within

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Onefile, I'm going to go ahead and

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do a similar search

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using

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proximity searching this time.

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The proximity operator is going to look for,

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I look for plastic

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and then my wild card, I want it to

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be within three words of

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pollution.

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So it doesn't need to be

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plastic followed by pollution. It can be within

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three words of that. 'Plastic

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is increasing pollution' would pop

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up as a result, for example.

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And then I'm also going to narrow down by

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the publication title. You have so

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many publication titles available to you

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within your periodical resources. General

[00:11:13.620]
onefile has over 9000.

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This is a great way to take a look at the

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way that different publications are covering

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the same issue.

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So I want to look at coverage from

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'the new york times'

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or 'USA Today'

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(and you'll notice I'm putting that on the same line).

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OR usa today

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you can add as many rows and search terms as you like

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so you can make your search as

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detailed as you'd like. So I'm looking for

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plastic within three words of

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pollution. Only these two publications,

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I do still have the option to add limiters

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if I want to look by a specific date,

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but I'm okay with this. I'm going to go ahead

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and run my search

[00:12:06.038]
and we've gotten very specific results

[00:12:09.639]
within Gale General Onefile. What's nice is

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you can click 'search alert' right

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next to the 'search history' we were using earlier

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and we can be notified every time there are

[00:12:19.440]
new results on that search.

[00:12:21.450]
So I don't have to repeat typing that search in every

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time if this is a topic I care

[00:12:25.740]
about and want to get informed daily,

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weekly, monthly content from those publications.

[00:12:31.538]
I can also set up an rss feed.

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Maybe I want to start a channel on Feedly

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or another rss reader,

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just cut and paste that link in there.

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Another quick thing I can do, I can

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look for publication in advanced search.

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I can also just click on the title of

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the publication. These titles are all hyperlinks

[00:12:56.038]
and I can also create a journal alert from here

[00:12:58.158]
So every time new information comes

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in from 'the new york times', I can choose that

[00:13:02.340]
to go to my rss feed

[00:13:04.240]
or I can choose to have that emailed to

[00:13:06.298]
me on a schedule that works

[00:13:08.399]
for me. You can do this within

[00:13:10.418]
any of your Gale Onefile products.

[00:13:12.639]
The advanced search is giving us a lot

[00:13:14.678]
of different options

[00:13:16.139]
to narrow down our search or

[00:13:18.158]
to widen it, if we're looking for a larger variety

[00:13:20.538]
of different resources.

[00:13:28.240]
Now we are going to get to questions and answers

[00:13:30.778]
at the end of this 15 minutes, but before

[00:13:33.350]
we do that, I want to mention that you do

[00:13:35.350]
have a gale customer success manager

[00:13:37.580]
available.

[00:13:38.639]
That person is going to help you be successful

[00:13:40.908]
with all things Gale: usage, statistics,

[00:13:43.778]
marketing, if you need

[00:13:45.908]
to integrate with an LMS,

[00:13:48.110]
if you need different ideas, this person

[00:13:50.350]
is here to help. And every account has a

[00:13:52.500]
Customer Success manager dedicated to them. This is the generic

[00:13:54.840]
email if you

[00:13:56.139]
don't yet know the customer success manager for your

[00:13:58.240]
account. We have lots

[00:14:00.360]
of support and training materials at support.gale.com

[00:14:02.240]
This is a 15 minute, real quick

[00:14:04.538]
tutorial. We do have longer tutorials

[00:14:06.928]
available on advanced search and

[00:14:09.259]
on each unique database.

[00:14:11.500]
So check that out at support.gale.com

[00:14:13.509]
You can also find things like

[00:14:15.610]
scavenger hunts and promotional materials

[00:14:17.778]
ready for you.

[00:14:19.840]
We hope that you've enjoyed today's session.

[00:14:22.000]
We will be staying to answer questions,

[00:14:24.278]
but if you only have 15 minutes

[00:14:26.548]
today,

[00:14:27.440]
thank you for being with us. Please

[00:14:29.668]
feel free to complete the training survey.

[00:14:32.330]
It will be emailed to you with

[00:14:34.440]
a copy of this recording tomorrow.

[00:14:36.850]
We love hearing from you and how

[00:14:38.908]
we can improve as well as

[00:14:41.230]
getting feedback about how you're

[00:14:43.360]
going to be using this in your library

[00:14:45.620]
or institution.

[00:14:47.639]
So thank you so much for being here with us for

[00:14:49.720]
this 15 minutes. Please be sure and

[00:14:51.778]
sign up for other training

[00:14:53.918]
at support.gale.com.
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