Primary Search

About Primary Search

Created for elementary school libraries and children’s libraries, Primary Search provides users with full text access to nearly 70 primary school magazines. Primary Search also provides indexing and abstracts for 100 additional titles. Publications covered include Hopscotch, Jack & Jill, Ladybug, Ranger Rick and Spider. Full text coverage goes back to 1990 while the indexing and abstracts goes back to 1985. Special features include the American Heritage Children’s Dictionary and an image collection.

Contents of Tutorial

• Uses
• Coverage and Scope
• Publications
• Basic and Advanced Searching
• Search Tips
• Limiters and Expanders
• Special Features

Uses

To locate articles from popular children’s magazines, image searching and dictionary usage.

Coverage and Scope

Primary Search provides indexing and abstracts for almost 100 magazines from 1985.

Full Text

There is full text coverage for almost 70 magazines from 1990.

Publications

Publications available in the database include Appleseeds, Boys’ Life, Cobblestone and Science World.

To find out what other publications are included in the database:

1. Select the “publications” link at the top of the basic or advanced search screen.
2. Type the name of the periodical in the “Browse Publications” search field not the “Find” search field at the top of the screen.
3. If the magazine is indexed in Primary Search then the title will be displayed with the results. To view information about the publication such as which years are covered in Primary Search, just click on the name of the periodical.

Basic and Advanced Searching

There is a basic and advanced search option. The only difference between the two options is that in the advanced search there are three “Find” fields in which to enter search terms which can then be narrowed to search a specific field such as title, author, subject etc...This is helpful in focusing your search.

Search Tips

All of the following search techniques can be used for searching Primary Search

Boolean Operators	AND, OR, NOT	To help narrow or broaden your search
Quotations	“sled dog racing”	To Search for an exact phrase
Parentheses	dog AND (sledding OR mushing)	For a more focused search: results include dog and sledding or dog and mushing
Wildcard	me?t	To replace a single letter: results include meat or meet
Truncation	meat*	To search for all forms of a word: results include meat, meatballs, meatloaf, meatless meals etc…

Limiters and Expanders

To limit the materials searched within the database, you can enter in a publication name such as Appleseed and have the database search for your keywords within that specific publication only. You can also search for articles written during a specific time such as August 2003 to January 2004. A search can also be limited to return results from articles with full text access only or from a particular type of publication such as a periodical, biography or primary source document. The results can also be limited to include articles at a specific reading level.

There are three ways to expand your the number of articles retrieved. The search for related words option will search for the synonyms and plural forms of the keywords you typed in the search box. The search within the full text of the articles option searches the whole document, abstract and citation for your keywords instead of just searching for your keywords in the title, author, subject etc... fields. Selecting the automatically “And” search terms option also expands your search results.

Special Features

• American Heritage Children’s Dictionary, 3rd edition from Houghton Mifflin
• Image collection of 285,186 photos, maps and flags

For further information on TexShare databases send questions and comments to texshare.tsl.state.tx.us.