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Use the ProQuest Dialog™ free practice demo to become familiar with all that ProQuest Dialog has to offer.
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What is ProQuest Dialog free practice and how will it help you? This demo gives you an opportunity to learn how to navigate the site and become familiar with all its features and advantages. It's a chance for you to hone your searching skills and be ready to take advantage of this innovative service when you start using it for real. You will be able to move quickly and get the answers you need. This module shows the four demo databases, Basic and Advanced searches in Education databases and Medicine databases and also provides practice exercises.
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Test-drive ProQuest Dialog and find out why it puts you at an advantage to spend more time on answers than on constructing search strategies. Hone your searching skills. Try amazing features such as the date slider, and Narrow results by options. See how easy it is to select appropriate records and print out or save results. The demo site is free, so try topics of interest to you in the fields of education and medicine.
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ProQuest Administrator Module is a tool that ProQuest has enhanced for the new platform. With this tool you can customize your ProQuest Dialog interface, configure outbound linking to full-text subscriptions, direct access to ProQuest Dialog, create a My Research Administrator to control your company's end-user access, and request usage reports.
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There are three education files and one biomedical file. These practice files contain slices of information covering data published between 2005 and 2010.
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When you login you go to the Home Page. You can search all four demo databases using ProQuest Dialog Demonstration or click the title of the database to search one. Click the Information icon to see a description of each database. You can also search in one or more databases, by clicking Change at the top of the screen. Click Show included databases to see each one.
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This module is divided into sections, click the one you want to view.
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There are three education files, Australian Education Index, British Education Index and ERIC. These practice files contain slices of information covering data published between 2005 and 2010.
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In this first search we'll use the three education databases. Click Clear all and then the +sign next to Education to see all databases in the category or you can click Search Education industry to search all databases in the category.
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Check the databases you want to search and click Use selected databases at the top of the screen. Now you're ready to start a search in these three databases.
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On the Basic Search screen enter your search terms. We'll search for web-based training. Note that train and base are followed by the asterisk to pick up all forms of the word. See too that we're searching for web hyphen base and web base as two words.
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ProQuest Dialog returns with results, in this case some six thousand of them. There are several ways you can narrow your search. One is Search within. Click Search within. ProQuest Dialog takes you to the Search within box at the bottom of the screen where you may enter term(s). We'll add corporate to search for corporate web-based training.
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The Results page provides several other ways you can narrow your search. You can narrow results by Source type, publication title, document type, subject terms, companies and more. Narrowed results by terms appear in RANKed order by field,
and you can browse terms just to look for more vocabulary. You can also narrow by date using the date slider or by entering a specific date range. Just drag the handles at the bottom of the slider to the date range you want—here 2009-2010 — and click Update.
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On the Results page you can also change the way the records are sorted. Currently they are sorted by relevance, but you can change that to most recent first or oldest first. Note the source types listed in ranked order. Click one of them to narrow
further. Click the Preview button to get a quick view of a record, with some indexing shown. Or click a hyperlinked title to view a record in full or choose to look at just its citation/abstract.
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This is a full record from one of the abstract and indexed records. Notice you can click "show less" to see less of the abstract. The bottom of the record shows the indexing. Click See similar items in the sidebar for more like this record.
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At the top of the screen you see the number of searches you have created. Let's modify the first search we did. Click the Recent searches link and check the one you want to modify. Then click Modify search.
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Your original search displays and you can add new terms in this example effective with an asterisk.
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Now you have a new search, also saved in recent searches. You can then continue to narrow your search from here.
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In this next example we'll search the Advanced Search form in ERIC. This database comes from the United States Department of Education and covers the entire field of education. The practice database covers data between 2005 and 2010.
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From the previous search, click change to return to the list of databases. Click the database you want to search, here ERIC.
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To start an Advanced Search, click Advanced and then from the dropdown box, click Advanced Search. You can also click Advanced Search above the Basic Search box.
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The Advanced Search form contains query boxes along with the option to qualify to fields in the drop-down menus. You can also use dropdown boxes to AND or OR more terms. Notice Limit to check boxes and date range drop-down menus, followed by More options below for Document Type and Education Level.
Enter search terms in the first Advanced Search box. In this example use self pace with an asterisk, the OR connector and self-pace with a hyphen. Narrow to the document title by selecting it from the drop-down box. Enter your next terms learn OR instruct with asterisks to retrieve all forms of the words. Notice these terms are connected to box 1 with the AND connector. From the drop-down box, you will look for these terms in all fields. Next select a date range from the drop-down box—the last 3 years. Now click Search.
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14 records display. Notice the search is shown at the top of the screen. You can also narrow further using the Narrow results by features on the right of the screen or you can search within or Modify search.
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When you click modify search, you see the Advanced search form. To limit to adults, type adult in row 3. You do not need an asterisk if you just want adult or adults as ProQuest Dialog looks for both. Click Search.
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You can see the entire record by checking the checkbox or clicking the title. Click the link to full text to see the entire article.
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A nice feature is the ability to translate the abstracts into other languages. Click Translate and select the language to translate from in this example, English and translate to German.
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The abstract is now translated into German. To undo the translation, dick the Undo Translation link. You can Save the records to My Research, email, print, cite, export or save as file. You can also add tags.
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There is one checked item at the top of the screen. Click Save to My Research to save your records in one place. Put your username and password in and click sign in to save your record.
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You now have some options. Click the Medicine button to review Basic and Advanced searches in the medicine databases. Click Education to review the education searches. Click Wrap Up to review what you've learned and try the sample exercises.
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The following example shows the use of the Basic Search form in MEDLINE. This database comes from the United States National Library of Medicine and covers the entire field of medicine. The practice database covers data between 2005 and 2010.
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From the Home page, click MEDLINE Demo to search this database. You can search all four demo databases using ProQuest Dialog Demonstration.
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In view by Industry click the + sign next to Medicine databases. Then check MEDLINE as the database you want to search. Click Show included databases to see each one. You can also search in one or more databases, by clicking Change at the top of the screen.
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Scroll down, and under MEDLINE, check MEDLINE and Use Selected databases link or click Search this database under MEDLINE demo.
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The Basic Search form allows you to enter a one-line search query in the query box. As you type in words, ProQuest Dialog suggests terms. In phrases, the logical operator AND is assumed, so ProQuest Dialog interprets the statement entered here as multiple and sclerosis, somewhat broader than if you entered the phrase in quotation marks. Click the magnifying glass or hit <Enter> to run the search.
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ProQuest Dialog returns with results, in this case some 14 thousand of them. There are several ways you can narrow your search. One is Search within. Click Search within. ProQuest Dialog takes you to the Search within box at the bottom of the screen where you may enter term(s). Quotation marks around the search terms will search them as a phrase.
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The Results page provides additional ways you can narrow your search. You can narrow results by publication title, document type, MeSH subjects, authors and more. Narrow results by terms appear in RANKed order by field, and you can browse terms just to look for more vocabulary. You can also narrow by date using the date slider or by entering a specific date range. Just drag the handles at the bottom of the slider to the date range you want, in this example, 2010, and click Update.
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From your results list, click the Preview button to get a quick view of a record, with some indexing shown. Or click a hyperlinked title to view a record in full or choose to look at just its citation.
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Click the title and the entire record displays. Click show all to see the rest of the abstract. The indexing including other terms that might be useful and links to authors are available.
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This example shows the use of the Advanced Search form in MEDLINE. This database comes from the United States National Library of Medicine and covers the entire field of medicine. The practice database covers data between 2005 and 2010.
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To search in one database, click Change at the top of the screen. Click Show included databases.
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Scroll down, and under MEDLINE, click Search this database.
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In MEDLINE, clicked Advanced search from the dropdown box or above the search box.
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The Advanced Search form contains query boxes along with the option to qualify to fields in the drop-down menus. There is a top line along with additional query boxes to AND or OR more terms. Notice Limit to check boxes and date range drop-down menus, followed by More options below for Medical Subject Heading (MeSH), CAS® Registry Number, Authors and Author affiliation query and look-up features.
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If you want to look up a MeSH term, you can choose one of the MeSH fields from the drop-down menu. Notice the link to "Look up Major MeSH". Click the link.
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Enter a term you think might be a MeSH heading. You are looking for indexing on Ewing's Sarcoma. Enter Ewing, click Contains so Ewing is part of the search term and click Find.
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The MeSH term Sarcoma, Ewing's appears. Check the box to the left of the term and click Add to search.
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ProQuest Dialog adds the term to the top line with the Major MeSH field in place. Next add keywords such as therapy OR treat truncated with the asterisk. The asterisk is open truncation, which means that ProQuest Dialog will look for variations on the root stems therap OR treat. ProQuest Dialog has other truncation options, which are covered in the ProQuest Dialog At a Glance On-Demand module "Using Truncation and Boolean Operators." Check the Limit option for Human and click Search.
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The results page appears with records sorted by relevance. You can sort by Date (most recent first) or Date (oldest first). You can Narrow results by Document type, Author, CAS Registry Number, MeSH subjects, Publication title or by date. Click MeSH subjects and view the five top terms from this retrieval. Click More options, which opens a dialog box where you can check off boxes for terms you wish to include or exclude. Then click Apply.
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Results return showing what you specified. Notice the Date slider that you can hover over date bars or move the navigators to include the publication years or dates you want.
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You can select records to store to view later. ProQuest Dialog holds the records selected for the duration of the session. Six records have been selected and now we want to look at them. Click View selected items.
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Display options appear. Click the radio button for the view you wish to see and touch Display.
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The selected items appear. You can Save the records to My Research, email, print, cite, export or save as file.
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Finally, ProQuest Dialog gives you the option to save certain records permanently to your own My Research account. This will come in handy when you are doing actual searches in your own ProQuest Dialog account.
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Again you have more options Click the one that best meets your needs.
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To sum up what you learned about ProQuest Dialog free practice: it is important to try out searches on the demo site so you can get familiar with Basic and Advance Search options. Remember that the demo site is not the whole ProQuest Dialog, but a portion of three education databases and one biomedical file. Test out the sort option and try narrowing results using "Narrow results by." Finally, have a go at the practice exercises.
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Click the link below to go to sample exercises to try in ProQuest Dialog demo databases. Once you have completed the searches, check your answers.