Category Archives: Databases

Setting up a ProQuest Account

  1. Go to the E-Resources A-Z list: http://eresources.rhul.ac.uk/kb/Main_Page
  2. Go to any of these ProQuest databases: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, ProQuest Entrepreneurship, British Periodicals, FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals, Guardian and Observer, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, John Johnson Collection, Literature Online (LION), New York Times, Periodicals Archive Online, PRISMA: Publicaciones y Revistas Sociales y Humanísticas (via Senate House)
  3. On the home page click the My Research (or on some databases My Archive) link
  4. On the log-in page click on the Create a My Research account link. This will take you to a registration page. You will need to enter a username and password and an email address to register. Once you have done this an email will be sent to you with a link which you will need to follow to confirm registration. Once you have registered you can sign in each time you visit the site to access your personal account and searches.

Note:  If you have not logged into ProQuest through your institution for a period of 76 days, you will be notified by email that your My Research account will become inactive after 90 days.

Creating Accounts in EBSCO databases

You can create your own log-in within these databases and save results to your own personal folder.

To create your account, simply click on the ‘sign in’ option along the top menu and then choose to create an account.

Sign in on Ebsco

The next time you log into an EBSCO database you can then ‘Sign in’ using your EBSCO user name and start adding things to your folder.  That way you’ll always have a record of the useful articles and reports you found.

When you are logged into your account the EBSCO symbol next to the search box will look like this:

My Ebsco

 

 

Google Search tips

The tips below are useful when searching Google and other databases.

Search term example  Explanation 
“ethical consumer” Use double quotes (“”) if you want Google to search a phrase in that exact order
beverages -tea Type a minus (-) sign immediately before the term you want to exclude. The minus sign should be placed immediately before the word preceded by a space. This search retrieves items on various beverages other than tea
“fair trade” tea OR coffee Google’s default is to search all the words you type in your search. If you want it to search either one or several words, you can use the OR operator (note that OR must be typed in upper-case)
“student protest” 1960..1970 If you want to limit the result to pages covering the subject within a specified date (e.g. 1960-1970) type the date separated by two stops (..) and no spaces
~school If you want to search for synonyms place the tilde ~ immediately in front of the word or phrase. Eg ~school will retrieve pages on college, academy, university, education, etc.
consum* Insert an asterisk (*) as a wildcard symbol. This allows stem or word variation searches. For example typing consum* will retrieve material on consumer, consumers, consumerism, consumption, etc.

Using the Biographies feature in Nexis

Biographies nexisThe biographies search feature in Nexis allows you to search for people. You can run searches on All Biographies and News which searches both the biographical information at the news information or you can search through the biographical sources (combined or individually).

The Biographical sources are:

  • Biographies de Acteurs Publics
  • Biographies of Ams (Welsh Assembly)
  • Biographies of Civil Servants
  • Biographies of Members of the European Parliament
  • Biographies of MLAs (Northern Ireland Assemblies)
  • Biographies of MSPs (Scottish Parliament)
  • Biographies of Peers
  • Biographies of Westminster Members of Parliament
  • Content5 Personen (Deutsch)
  • Content5 Persons (English)
  • Directory of Directors (Directors Profiles)
  • ICC Directors (Irish)
  • ICC Disqualified Directors
  • Le Trombinoscope
  • London Stock Exchange – Board Membership*
  • Marquis Who’s Who Biographies
  • Producer Sanction Report
  • Standard & Poor’s Corporate Register of Directors & Executives
  • The Associated Press Candidate Biographies
  • The CIO Directory
  • TOP 100 INTELLIGENCE ECONOMIQUE
  • TOP 100 LOBBYING D’ENTREPRISE
  • Top Management Biographies
  • Who’s Who in American Art
  • Who’s Who in American Politics
  • Who’s Who In European Business*
  • Who’s Who in European Business and Industry
  • Who’s Who in European Politics*
  • Who’s Who in France
  • Who’s Who in International Banking*
  • Who’s Who in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States*

This video shows you how to do a basic search.

How do I ensure that my search retrieves all articles containing the different spellings of a person’s first name and/or surname?

To use multiple name variations when searching for a person:

  1. Open the Biographies search form.
  2. In Surname, enter the surname of the person that you are looking for using the wildcard * to account for all single character combinations. For example, to find all variations of the name Clark, enter Cl*rk*, this will search for Clark, Clarke and even Clerk. Where you cannot account for all the variations using the *, use the or connector. For example, to find the surname McCallum enter maccallum or mccallum.
  3. In First Name enter the first name of the person that you are researching using the wild card * to account for any single character differences. For example, Tan*a will search for Tania or Tanya. Where the * cannot account for all the variations of the name, use the or connector. For example, to find the name John or Jonathan enter john or jonathan.
  4. Click on Search to retrieve your results.
How do I search for a person within a specific source?
  1. Open the Biographies search form.
  2. In Surname and First Name, enter the name of the person you are searching for.
  3. From the Sources drop-down list, select the source that you would like to search. It will default to All Biographies + News, but you can select a smaller source such as Executive Biographies.
  4. Click on Search to retrieve your results.