Military
and Government Collection I
Written by Brad Baker and revised by Jane Stimpson
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This tutorial will help answer the following questions:
- What is the most effective way of searching the Millitary and Government Collection database?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the database?
- What are some ways of searching that might not be immediately clear to searchers?
The Military and Government Collection provides full text access to nearly 300 publications, such as:
- Academic Journals
- Defense Monitor, Armed Forces and Society, Military Medicine
- Periodicals
- Time, Newsweek, National Review, Progressive
- Special Publications
- FDCH Press Releases, FDCH Congressional Testimony, Aviation Week and Space Technology
Search features
Boolean searching
Search for multiple terms in the same search by entering AND, OR, or NOT to separate terms in a field. If you wanted information on sexual harassment in the Navy, you might search
Navy AND sexual harassment
Grouping with parentheses
If you use parentheses, the terms within the parentheses will be searched before the entire field, resulting in a more precise search
(Navy AND sexual harassment) NOT (tailhook OR Stumpf)
Proximity
You can search for terms that are near one another by using the near operator. If you search for tailhook N10 sexual harassment you will find instances where “tailhook” is found within 10 words of “sexual harassment.”
Refine or expand your search
After you perform a search, one easy way to refine your search is to consult the “limit your results” and the "narrow results" tabs on either side of your search results. These features allow you to limit the search to results available in full text, published in peer-reviewed journals, or with illustrations. You can also narrow your search results by subject heading and publication. You can expand your search by viewing related information and images.
Default fields
If you’d like to search in a hurry, without selecting specific fields to search, the default fields will search for your selected terms in:
- All Authors
- All Subjects
- All Keywords
- All Title Words
- All Abstracts
Search results reminder: Results are returned sorted by date. They can also be sorted by source or relevance.
Searchable Fields
If you click on the drop down menus in an Advanced Search, you will find many different fields to use if you don’t want to use the default field. You can search, for example, in the full text of an article; in the text of an abstract; by author; by title;by journal name; by ISSN or ISBN; by subject term; by geographic term, or by accession number. These fields do not represent, however, all the fields in which one can search. Try out these additional search fields by entering the two digit code and your term.
AS |
Enter AS [search term] to restrict your search to results with author supplied abstracts. |
CS |
Enter CS [search term] to restrict your search to only those documents that are a cover story. |
DT |
To find items from a specific date, search in the format YYYYMMDD, as in DT 20010911. Search for months in the form YYYYMM. You can also limit your results to a publication date range in "Search Options" or in the "Limit your results" tab. |
JN,
VI,
IP
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To find all the articles from a specific issue of a journal, use the Journal Name, Volume Number, and Issue Number codes. |
PZ |
To search for a document type, enter the PZ code before the type of document you want to retrieve, such as PZ article or PZ speech. |
PG |
If you want articles of a specific length, use this code and the “>” and “<“ symbols. For example, if you want your results to have between 3 and 7 pages, enter PG >3 AND PG <7 |
RV |
To restrict the results of your search to those from a peer-reviewed journal, enter RV [search term]. You can also choose this option in the "Limit your results" tab after you perform a search. |
One of the most useful resources for those using the EBSCOhost is the My EBSCO feature. This feature will enable you to:
- Save and view your search history
- Save articles to folders
- Set and save preferences
- Share your saved folders, or view others' folders
- Create email alerts and RSS feeds for your favorite searches
The Index
To effectively search by subject in the Military and Government Collection, it is important to understand how to use the index, a listing of the subject headings that can be used in the database. There are two ways to find subjects in the index: searching by relevancy or alphabetically.
Searching the Subject Index Alphabetically
Let’s say you want to use the “army” subject heading while doing a search. First, you might search alphabetically for “army.” You will find the term “army” does not appear in the index; instead you are pointed towards “armies.” But when you click on “armies” you are neither sent to the index listing for “armies,” nor do you start a subject search for the "armies." This is a mistake in the system to watch out for. If you want to use the “armies” term, you must type it into the alphabetical searching field. When you find the “armies” entry you may either select it or consider one of the selected narrower terms. If you check the box, you can either consider yourself satisfied with searching only the “armies” subject heading, or pick more. When you have finished selecting all the subjects you want to search, hit search and you will be returned to the search page with the subject search completed, using the Boolean operator “OR” to link your selected subject headings.
Searching the Subject Index by Relevancy
The index can also be searched by relevancy, but beware, the most relevant results do not always appear first. For example, if one searches for “Clinton, Bill” (or “Bill Clinton”) the entry for the former president is the seventh item retrieved, which will point you toward the correct subject heading of "Clinton, Bill, 1946-". If one enters “USMC” one finds no entry for the US Marine Corps. A better way to search for USMC is to search alphabetically using "Marines" as your search term.
Mistakes in the Index
Be aware of sloppy mistakes in the index, such as names filed under the first name rather than the last (Bill, Clinton) |
