Find Information
For most students, the biggest problem encountered in the research
process is knowing where to begin. Discovering Collection removes this stumbling block by providing students with
numerous easy-to-use search options. Searches include:
Basic Search
This search appears on the main page and simply requires
students to enter a word, words or phrase and then select from three options: Subject (which is the default), Keyword or Entire Document. Subject Search will search manually indexed subject terms, presenting the most significant articles on a topic. Keyword Search will search the first 150 words of a document, including author and title fields, returning a greater number of results, which is ideal for students interested in building a wider perspective on a topic. Entire Document will search the full text of the document, returning the largest number of results.
Students can also choose to limit the results to documents with images, by content type and by content level.
Advanced Search
Experienced researchers find our Advanced Search a great way to immediately hone their search request. Students can enter up to 10 keywords or phrases, indicate in which indexes to look for the word(s), e.g., document title, publication title, document author, person name, etc. and combine or separate them using Boolean operators (and, or, not).
Students can also further limit their results by using such limiters as:
- To documents with images
- By document type
- By content level
- And many more!
Subject Guide Search
Gives students the ability to browse a listing of subjects, people, products, locations and organizations that contain the words entered.
Publication Search
Gives researchers the ability to search for a single edition, volume or issue of a particular publication and retrieve all of its available documents.
Curriculum Standards Search
A national and state curriculum standards search, correlated to the content, that allows educators to quickly identify material by grade and discipline.
Topic Tree Search
Curriculum topic trees feature one-click access to the hottest, most-searched topics in each major curriculum area. Students can simply select a topic from the popular topic picklist on the home page or select a topic tree:
- Cultures
- Geography
- Literature
- Science
- U.S. History
- World History
Tools:
Dictionary
Choose Dictionary from the home page and enter a term or the beginning
of the term you are searching for. You can search in Merriam-Webster's
Collegiate.
Tool Box
Searching for articles in databases may seem easy,
but putting all that information together for reports can be a challenge.
We've created some tools to help students think about their ideas
and organize their information to create comprehensive and focused
reports. They can access the tools at any point in the research
process just by clicking on the tool box to access:
Research Guide
Helps students best utilize Discovering Collection and information for their research needs. Topics include Distinguishing between Primary and Secondary Sources, Evaluating Information Sources and more.
Research Tools
These tools are designed to help students in every
step of the research process from starting to organizing their
findings to writing a report to wrapping everything up. Downloadable
templates, such as Choose a Topic, Make an Outline and Cite a Source are provided.
Search Tips
Discovering Collection offers an array of search
tips and hints to use the database to its fullest.
Search Results
Search results are returned organized according to the following data types: Reference,
Creative Works, Primary Sources and Multimedia. An organizational system of tabs
allows all of the different data types to be viewed from a single
results screen.
The Discovering Collection allows
teachers to "Infomark" items by sharing persistent URLs
in an e-mail or web page, for example, allowing them to direct the
students to information the teacher considers most useful. Students
are then able to access these "Infomarked" items at any
time. Additionally, users may e-mail search results to themselves
or others and save results to diskette, hard drive, or format for
printing. Learn more
about InfoMarks.
Additional Features:
Discovering Collection is now available on the Gale PowerSearch platform, which has many advanced features, including:
- "Keyword in context" within results list that allows users to easily determine relevance of search result
- Bread crumb navigation that allows users to see where they are in a search by displaying a sequence of pages navigated
- Translation feature that allows users to translate documents into Spanish, French, Japanese, German, Italian, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese and Korean; users can also choose to display the interface in Spanish, French or Portuguese
- Configurable Google© image search that helps students easily search for additional images
- How to Cite feature that allows users to generate citation information using a style of their choice
|
