Technology Collection: Searchable Fields

A thesaurus provides a standard language or set of terms with which to describe a subject area. Applied to indexing of a database, it indicates to a searcher which terms to use to retrieve the maximum number of relevant documents.

The thesaurus terms are used by indexers to describe the contents of publications in a consistent, comprehensive and concise manner. These terms are listed in the Subject field (SU) of each record added to the database.

Using our interactive Thesaurus Search you can browse for terms via a hierarchical, alphabetical, or search words within a concept. These display formats allow you to navigate the thesaurus alphabetically or through the hierarchical relationships between terms. After finding appropriate terms, you can submit a search for those terms in the database descriptor field.

The following thesauri are available for the  Technology Collection. Note that many of these thesauri are database-specific, and may limit search results to documents from those databases.

• ANTE Abstracts in New Technologies and Engineering Thesaurus
• Copper Thesaurus
• Engineered Materials Thesaurus
• Life Sciences Thesaurus
• Metallurgical Thesaurus
• NASA Thesaurus
• Pollution Thesaurus
• ProQuest thesaurus
• Taxonomic Terms (Latin Names of Organisms Vocabulary)
• Technology Terms

The Technology Collection offers six 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: author, publication, subject, company/organization, location and classification. 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. Other look ups and browsable indexes will be listed in the Limit To section of 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.