A thesaurus is an alphabetical listing of all the subject terms in a single database, used to classify and organize information for that database. The thesaurus shows relationships between terms such as synonyms or related terms, and hierarchical arrangements such as broader terms, or narrower terms. Most ProQuest databases have an associated thesaurus. By adding thesaurus terms to your search, you can broaden or narrow your search, or find related words to further explore your subject of interest.
To use the thesaurus, select the Thesaurus link from the Advanced or Command Line Search, then browse or search for subjects containing the word or beginning with the word. Mark the items that you would like to search and then select the appropriate Boolean operator to combine your items. Click the Add to search button and your terms will be placed into the search form. From there, run your search to include the subject terms. You can also combine terms you find in the thesaurus with your current Advanced or Command Line search.
In addition to the all encompassing subject field, there is also a separate subject field for company/organization, person, and location. These are also included in the searchable fields table to the right.
You can also find additional Thesaurus help from our Thesaurus help file.
ProQuest databases offer up to seven Look ups or browsable indexes, so you can easily find spelling or format variations of, for example, an author's name or a journal title. You can find the Look up links in the advanced search page and they are available for the following searchable fields (dependent on the selected ProQuest database(s)): author, publication, subject, company/organization, person, location, and NAICS. For a description of these fields, please see the searchable fields table to the right.
Note: Look ups are also available from the Command Line search (through the Look up terms link).
To use and locate a Look up or browsable index, select the field from the advanced search pull-down menu. If a Look up is available, under the search row you will see a link to the Look up. Some databases will display their Look ups and browsable indexes above the Source Type field in the advanced search page.
Select the Look up link and then you will see a browsable and alphabetical index for that field. There are some indexes that will not display an alphabetical list before searching for the term, rather you will have to enter a term first, and then the alphabetical list of matches will display.
Once you locate the index term that you would like to add to your search, mark the item, and then click the Add to search button. The index term will now appear in the advanced search form along with the appropriate pull-down menu selection.
An accessible version of the Searchable Fields table is available below.
|
Field Name |
Label |
Search Examples & Explanation |
|
Abstract |
AB
|
AB(global warming) Publication abstracts are provided for most articles. Search the abstract field specifically to ensure that you get focused results. Search phrases using truncation to capture alternative endings of words; search multi-word phrases with quotation marks to ensure exact phrases. |
|
Anywhere |
N/A |
(tornadoes OR hurricanes OR “natural disasters”) Enter keyword(s) without a field code label to search the entire record. |
|
Anywhere except full text |
NOFT |
NOFT(criminal justice) Searches for keywords in the citation and abstract. It is a full record search, but does not include a search on the full text. |
|
Author |
AU
|
AU(Knowles, Malcolm) Use to find documents written by a particular author. Try searching on both the full first name and initials in order to retrieve all publications by a specific author. Can be searched as (last name, first name) or (first name last name). |
|
Author Affiliation |
AF |
AF(MIchigan) Use to search on additional author information such as institutional affiliation, location of institution, and if provided, the email address of the author can sometimes appear in this field. |
|
Cited Author |
CAU |
AU(Greenspan) Use to search for an author that is part of the Cited References section of a record. |
|
Cited Document Title |
CTI |
CTI(Mortgages) Use to search for document titles that are part of the Cited References section of a record. |
|
Cited Publication Date |
CYR |
CYR(October 1987) Use to search for publication dates that are part of the Cited References section of a record. |
|
Cited Publication Title |
CPUB |
CPUB(economist) Use to search for a publication title that is part of the Cited References section of a record. |
|
Company/Organization |
ORG
|
ORG(Department of the Interior) Search for a company or other organizations featured prominently in an article. NAICS and SIC codes, when available, are also indexed in this field. |
|
Digital Object Identifiers |
DOI |
DOI(10.1007/s00180-010-0212-6) Search for documents with DOIs using the DOI search. |
|
Document Text |
FT |
FT(Freedom of expression) Search for keywords in the body of the article. |
|
Document Title |
TI
|
TI(Boston marathon) Locates the occurrence of search words in the title of the article. |
|
Document Type |
DType |
DType(Market Research) |
|
Image caption |
CAP |
CAP(Obama) Search the brief description usually accompanying an illustration or photograph. |
|
ISBN |
ISBN |
ISBN(9780549687191) This search field looks for the 12 and 13 digit International Standard Book Number (ISBN), where available. Hyphens are optional. |
|
ISSN |
ISSN |
ISSN(00014788) This search field looks for the eight digit International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), where available. Hyphens are optional. |
|
Issue |
ISS |
ISS(8368) Use to search the issue number of a resource. |
|
Journal Subject |
JSU |
JSU("Children and Youth-About") JSU(Psychology) Locate records using the journal's assigned subject coverage. Also see the Publications page and use the Subject narrowing facet to refine the list of publications by journal subject. |
|
Language |
LA |
LA(French) Use to locate the original language of the document. |
|
Location |
LOC |
LOC("Pacific Northwest") LOC("Detroit Michigan") LOC(Sweden) Search for a specific geographic area or location. |
|
MAINSUBJECT |
MAINSUBJECT.EXACT |
MAINSUBJECT.EXACT(yoga) This field can only be searched if the database has a thesaurus. The prefix MAINSUBJECT will be added to your search when you select the term from the Thesaurus or if you type the mnemonic. MAINSUBJECT is a way to limit to the subject heading originating from the thesaurus and does not include the use of terms coming from the location index, person index, company index or other classification terms. To search on terms that incorporate all of these subject and index terms, please use the Subject Heading field (SU). |
|
MeSH |
MeSH |
MESH(intervention studies) MeSH stands for Medical Subject Heading and is the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus. Any record with MeSH subjects means that the record is indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed. When a record has MeSH subjects assigned to it, you will often see ProQuest Subjects assigned to it as well. The ProQuest subjects appear in the Subject Heading (All) field. |
|
Page |
PG |
PG(221-230) PG (A1) Search for specific page numbers or page ranges. |
|
Person |
PER |
PER(Melinda Gates) Use to find articles about a person. |
|
Place of Publication |
CP |
CP(New York) Use to locate articles published in a specific place. This will search for the city and country of publication. |
|
Product |
NP |
NP(iPod) Use to find articles about a specific product. |
|
Publication Date |
PD |
PD(19871020) Use to find a specific publication date. Can be searched as: (YYYYMMDD) = (19871020) (YYYY and month) or (month and YYYY)= (1987 and Oct) (YYYY) = 1987 The use of <, >, and – are supported to specify before or after a specific date and a date range. |
|
Publication Title |
PUB
|
PUB(Nature) Use to search for a specific publication such as the journal or book title. |
|
Publisher |
PB |
PB(BioMed Central Ltd.) Use to search for the publisher of the source such as the journal publisher. |
|
References |
REF |
REF(occupational accidents) Use the reference search field to look for the data in a cited reference. It will search all of the main components of a cited reference (cited author, cited document title, cited publication date, and cited publication title). |
|
Source Type |
SType |
STYPE(newspapers) Use to find a specific source type such as books, newspapers, and scholarly journals. |
|
Subject Heading(All) |
SU |
SU(Yoga) Use the subject search field to look for articles about a specific subject. A search for the subject heading “yoga”, will find articles with the subjects-- yoga, ashtanga yoga, yoga practice, etc. To run an exact subject search where only “yoga” is retrieved and not subject terms that contain additional terms, search using EXACT. SU.EXACT(Yoga) |
|
Volume |
VO |
VO(100) Use to search for the volume of a resource. |