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Proquest ABI/Inform Collection

A guide to all aspects of ABI/INFORM Collection including content, searching, and viewing results on the ProQuest platform.

Thesaurus

The ProQuest Thesaurus is used to index the ABI/INFORM subject field. Subject terms are found in the subject field and this field is part of the searchable fields table to the right. Subject terms are also commonly known as descriptors, controlled vocabulary, and sometimes classification terms.

In ABI/INFORM, there are different subject types and 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.

The thesaurus allows you to find subject terms to narrow or broaden your search and is available from the Advanced, Command Line, and Data & Reports Search. If you want to run a search on a subject, but you do not know what term to use, use the thesaurus to search the controlled vocabulary. A hierarchical display is available and will give suggestions on the appropriate subject terms to add to your search.

To use the thesaurus, select the Thesaurus link from the Advanced, Command Line, or Data & Reports 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 (adding additional search fields and terms if needed).

Look Ups and Browsable Indexes

ABI/INFORM offers eight 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, person, location, classification code, 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). Several of the searchable fields from the Data & Reports and Look Up Citation search forms also offer Look up links.

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.

Searchable Fields

 

Field Name

Label

Search Examples & Explanation

Abstract

 AB

AB(child welfare worker)

We use the journal-provided abstract with little or no modification, or have members from our editorial team write an abstract from scratch, drawing on the article’s text and concepts. Our team’s goal is to make the article’s point as clearly and succinctly as possible.

Abstracts are available from 1987.

Accession Number

AN

AN(356894)

Search the unique database ID for articles and documents.

Anywhere

N/A

(Libor OR Euribor)

Enter keyword(s) without a field code label to search the entire record.

Anywhere except full text

ALL

ALL(credit default swaps)

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(Mossberg, Walt)

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.

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.

Classification Codes

CC

CC(1120)

 

Use Classification Codes when searching business topics. Classification Codes are a fast way to precisely target a search by topic, industry or market, geographical area, or article type.

Company/Organization

ORG

 

ORG(Ford) 

   

Search for a company or other organizations featured prominently in an article.

Digital Object Identifiers

DOI

DOI(10.1007/s00180-010-0212-6)

Search for documents with DOIs using the DOI search.

Document Feature

DF

DF(Chart)

Use to search for features in an article such as charts, diagrams, illustrations, and photographs.

Document Number

AN

AN(1713554)

Searches both the ProQuest document ID (applied to all documents) and the 3rd party document ID (applied to some    databases, such as PsycINFO).

Document Text

FT

FT(Mortgage backed securities)

Search for keywords in the body of the article.

Document Title

TI

 

TI(BRIC)

Locates the occurrence of search words in the title of the article.

Document Type

DType

DType(Market Research)

Use this to find specific document types such as article, business case, company profile, and market research.

International Standard Book Number

ISBN

ISBN(9780549687191)

This search field looks for the 12 and 13 digit International Standard Book Number (ISBN), where available. Hyphens are optional.

International Standard Serials Number

ISSN

 

ISSN(00014788)

This search field looks for the eight digit International Standard      Serials Number (ISSN), where available. Hyphens are optional.

Issue

ISS

ISS(8368)

Use to search the issue number of a resource.

Language

LA

LA(Spanish)

Use to locate the original language of the document.

Location

LOC

LOC(Austin)

Search for a specific geographic area or location.

NAICS

NAICS

NAICS(334111)

The NAICS code defines the economic activity of a business as defined by the US Census Bureau.

Person

PER

PER(Christine Lagarde)

Use to find articles about a person.

Product Name

NP

NP(Kindle)

Use to find articles about a specific product.

Publication date

PD

PD(19871020)

Use to find a specific publication date.

Publication Title

PUB

 

PUB(financial times)

Use to search by a specific publication or publications.

References

REF

REF(Barnett-Hart, Anna Katherine)

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(Accounts)

Use the subject search field to look for articles about a specific      subject. A search for the subject heading “accounts,” will find articles with the subject accounts, health savings accounts or checking accounts. To run an exact subject search where only “accounts” is retrieved and not subject terms that contain additional terms, search using EXACT.

SU.EXACT(accounts)

Tags

TAG

TAG(CDS)

Use to search for Tags attached to articles. This field is user generated and only searches Tags that were made public by ProQuest users.

Volume

VO

VO(100)

Use to search for the volume of a resource.

 

If you are experiencing problems with our guides contact the Library at library@limestone.edu.