Download JISC user guide - Rose Bruford VLE

JISC JOURNAL ARCHIVES
This guide is also available in
Section 8 of the Library’s VLE page:
http://vle.bruford.ac.uk/mod/folder/view.php?id=30083
JISC Journal Archives is part of an e-collection that also includes JISC Historic Books (on the Library’s
Books page of the VLE) and JISC MediaHub (on the Library’s Audio-visual resources page of the VLE):
Click on the SEARCH tab and then Authenticate or log-in to access JISC Journal Archives.
This should take you here:
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For best results or more effective searching it is recommended you use the Advanced Search.
When it comes to searching, please bear the following points in mind.
1. STOP: Before you type in anything to search for, reflect on your topic.
If one unique word will suffice, then fantastic, but the majority of the time your topics are
going to be a lot more complex than this.
2. So think about what words might be used in the journal articles here to describe your
topic, and note a few of them down. You don’t need to be excessive, but chances are
there will be more than one way to describe what you are looking for. You will combine
these words with AND.
3. Are any of the words you have written down synonyms, i.e. different words used to
describe roughly the same concept or idea? For example, although there may be nuances
of difference, often the terms marketing and advertising can be used to find articles on
roughly the same subject matter. You combine synonymous words by using OR.
4. Are there any cases where two or more words are used to describe the idea or concept?
Participatory theatre, theatre of the oppressed, set design, stage management.
What about names, both of people and places e.g. united kingdom, Great Britain
When searching for two or more words together use “…” around them.
5. A further refinement allowed in this database (and worth knowing about for use in others)
is what are known as “wildcards”. If you think about it there are sometimes words that
can be used where the beginning of the word is the same but the endings may be slightly
different: feminism and feminist, for example. In this case you could use the * symbol to
cover the different endings: feminis*. Adolesc* would find adolescent and adolescents
and adolescence etc. Child* would find child and children and childhood.
Having given your search topic a little thought you then need to combine your terms into a sensible
search that the database will understand. Different databases will allow you to lay this out in different
ways. Here is an example:
"experimental theatre" AND (women OR feminis*)
In this case I am looking for the phrase or want to find together the words experimental and theatre.
I have identified women and feminism as two words that could be used interchangeably and have
grouped these alternative or synonymous words with OR. I have also recognised the potentially
different ending of the word feminism/feminist and used * to cover these options.
I have combined the different concepts by using the word AND.
One word of caution: I have put brackets around the terms that could be used interchangeably.
Otherwise the database will get confused. If I had typed in the search like this:
“experimental theatres” AND women OR feminism or feminist
I would have ended up with articles on experimental theatre and women, plus any article about
feminism plus any article about feminist. Without the brackets the database doesn’t understand to
link experimental theatre with women, experimental theatre with feminism or experimental theatre
with feminist.
The two other journal databases we subscribe to (EBSCO’s IBTD and JSTOR) are aimed more
specifically at the performing arts. However, JISC is an archive of journal articles from a variety of
publishers and so it probably pays to limit your search to appropriate ones.
When you click on Archive you get the list of publishers, and some are really not appropriate:
ICE = Institute of Civil Engineers
IOP= Institute of Physics
RSC= Royal Society of Chemistry
You can also use the sliding scale under Publication date to focus your search more precisely. The
archive does contain material going as far back as 1800, but this may not always be useful for you.
So, the far left-hand column is for your search, and for refining your search. The middle column
displays the search results. When you click on any title in this middle column you get the details
displayed in the far right-hand column, with the option to Download full text pdf.
Finally, note the difference between entering your search terms as separate words and as a phrase.
Polish theatre (even when I have selected match all terms) brings up 2400+ results as it has found
every article where the word polish and the word theatre appear. But this would also include articles
talking about the theatre of war and the polish surrender or polish defeat. They have the words you
asked for, but not necessarily in the context you meant.
By contrast, searching for “polish theatre” makes the search more precise, and more pertinent to our
topic, and this only yielded 76 results.
It is also worth looking at the Related terms
suggested by the database as this can help
increase your own vocabulary of search terms
or suggest alternative (perhaps better) ways to
search for your topic. Or it may simply suggest
another term to add to the search to help you
focus on exactly what you are looking for.