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ABCCLIO Software Search Techniques


The Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life CDROMs use the ABCCLIO software. For more detailed searching, consult the database documentation at each station, press 1 HELP (to learn about the highlighted field) or contact the Library Information Desk.


To
Start


Define your search by identifying the important words and related terms for each concept. For example, to find records about the Education of Slaves during the Civil War, identify the key concepts for the topic, in this case: Slaves, Education, and Civil War.


To
Search Free Text



To Search Directly from the
Index


Use the online index to determine the number of times a word occurs, or find variants of a word.


Truncation


Truncate a root word or term with an asterisk or question mark to retrieve variants.

Example:SLAVE* will find slave, slaves, slavery etc. WOM?N will find women or woman. Think about the possible occurrences before using truncation.


Boolean Operators


Logical operators are words used to specify a relationship between two terms.

AND Terms connected by AND must occur in the same field.

OR Terms connected by OR can be present in the field, but are not required.

NOTThe term following NOT cannot be found in the field.

ADJ Words separated by ADJ must be next to each other, in the order typed.

NEARWords separated by NEAR must be next to each other, in any order.


Limiting


To narrow a search, use the limit fields such as language or time periods.

Example:ENGLISH OR FRENCH in the language field ; 1700H OR 1800H in the time period field. (Time Period: typing H represents century and typing D represents decade.)


To
Display Records



To
Mark Records


Records can be marked for printing during both List and Full Displays.


To
Print Records



To
Exit



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