1. Modify Search
Click Modify search to make changes to your current search strategy. Or make changes to your search in the search box.
2. Recent Searches
Click Recent searches to view your search history.
3. Related Searches
Each time you run a search, Related Searches displays suggested subjects that you may consider searching on if you find that you are dissatisfied with your current search results. The suggested subjects are related to your current keywords and pull directly from the subject field.
4. Search Within
Use the Search within to run a search within the current results. Add additional keywords and ProQuest will look for the keywords in the set of current search results. Selecting Search within toggles you to the bottom of the search results page.
5. Cite, Email, Print, Save & Save Search/Alert
For any results that you may have selected, use one of the tools to work with the selected items. Select items individually or select all items on the page.
The Cite tool generates a bibliography in any of the supported styles available from the pull-down menu. Copy and paste the generated bibliography into a document and make any necessary edits. Remember to always check for accuracy.
Email or Print any selected records.
Save to My Research adds the records to your My Research account where they will be stored and available each time you sign in to the My Research account.
Export/Save records to a bibliographic manager like RefWorks or New RefWorks (subscription and account required) or to the RIS file format. Exporting moves a copy of the record out of ProQuest and into one of the bibliographic managers or supported file formats. You can also save records in PDF, RTF, HTML, XLS, or text only format.
View Selected lets you view your selected records list.
Create Alert sets up an email alert that you schedule and when new records are added to the database that match your search criteria, the records will be emailed to you.
Create RSS feed sets up an RSS feed on the search strategy. Take the URL that is generated and put it into your RSS reader to begin pulling in records.
Use the Save search to save the search strategy to your My Research account. If you are not signed in, you will be prompted to sign in. If you don’t have an account you can sign up for one here too. For more information on My Research please see the My Research page of this guide.
6. Sort Results By
The Sort results by menu controls the sort order of the records that appear in the results page. Sort by relevance, publication date (oldest first), or publication date (most recent first). Relevance is determined by an algorithm that factors in the number of time your search terms appear in the record as well as where in the record your search terms appear.
7. Narrow Results By
Use the Narrow results by to apply additional limits (also known as filters or facets) to refine your results. The limits are pulled from the list of available indexed/searchable fields that appear in the current result set. Some of the main limits you can expect to find (each search and database is different so you can expect different limits to display) include source, publication title, subject, language, and date. Please see the Searchable fields page of this guide to see a list of the common indexed/searchable fields. For a list of database specific searchable fields, please see the applicable database LibGuide.
8. Source Type Icon
Hover over the Source type icon for the source type of the document. For more details such as a list of all source types available in your results and the amount of each source type, see Source type in the Narrow Results by panel on the left side of the results page.
9. Preview
Hover over the Preview to display a preview of the record and view the major fields of the record including the abstract and subjects. See the additional Preview screenshot to the right.
10. Document Formats and Linking
Each record will contain links to the available document formats and possibly any linking tools that the library administrator has enabled to help locate the full text. Please consider that not all records have full text available from ProQuest and you may only have a link to view the Abstract/Details (the full record). If your library has enabled tools to locate full text for you, you may see additional links on the Abstract/Details page.
11. Navigation and Items Per Page
Navigate to the other pages in your set of results by selecting the page number or the next page navigation.
Items per page is used to select how many results will display on the results page. Choose from 10, 20, 50, or 100 items.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses offers five Look ups or browsable indexes, so you can easily find spelling or format variations of, for example, an author's name or a subject name. You can find the Look up links in the advanced search page and they are available for the following searchable fields: Author, Advisor, Subject name, Index term and School name. 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).
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.
|
Field Name |
Label |
Search Examples & Explanation |
|
Abstract |
AB |
AB(child welfare worker) We use the author-provided abstract with little or no modification, or have members from our editorial team write an abstract from scratch, drawing on the document’s text and concepts. Our team’s goal is to make the document’s point as clearly and succinctly as possible. Citations for dissertations published from 1980 forward also include 350-word abstracts written by the author. Citations for master's theses from 1988 forward include 150-word abstracts. |
|
Advisor |
ADV |
ADV(Fogel, Aaron) Search for dissertations completed under the supervision of a specific academic advisor. If unsure of the spelling of a name, try using truncation. Advisor names are searchable in the following ways: ADV(first name), ADV(last name), ADV(last name, first name) or ADV(first name last name). |
|
All Fields |
ALL |
ALL(digital divide) ALL searches for keywords in the citation and abstract. It is a full record search, but does not include a search on the full text. The following fields are searched: Author Name, Abstract, Title, Subject Terms, Keywords, Advisor, School, Department, School Location, Manuscript Type, Publication number, ISBN. |
|
Alternate Language Title |
OTI |
OTI("The local area as a strategy for sustainable urban development") Use to look for dissertations by their alternate language title. For example, search for documents originally published in Spanish by searching for an alternate title in English. |
|
Author |
AU
|
AU(Kinsley, Michael) Use to find documents written by a particular author. |
|
Cited Author |
CAU |
CAU(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. |
|
Committee Member |
CMT |
CMT(Frazier, Michael) Use to search for dissertations reviewed by specific committee members. If you're unsure of the spelling of a name, try using truncation. Committte member names are searchable in the following ways: CMT(first name), CMT(last name), CMT(last name, first name) or CMT(first name last name) |
|
Degree |
DG |
DG(MLIS) Use to search on a graduate work for a particular degree, such as Ed. D. Also used to search for degree names. For master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation records, identifies the degree. |
|
Department |
DEP |
DEP(Computer Science) Use this field to search for dissertations granted by a specific department |
|
Document Text |
FT |
FT(Mortgage backed securities) Search for keywords in the body of the document. The abstracts are not included in this search. |
|
Document Title |
TI
|
TI(BRIC) Locates the occurrence of search words in the title of the document. |
|
Index Terms |
DISKW |
DISKW(habitat selection) Use this field to look for dissertations or theses by keyword. Index terms are keywords in the Identifier/keyword field assigned by the author or ProQuest. You can run a search for any keyword. Index terms in this field do not conform to any controlled vocabulary. When an author submits their dissertation or thesis to ProQuest, they can optionally assign up to six keywords to describe their graduate work. ProQuest may also assign index terms to improve discoverability. See the Subject headings (all) entry for additional information about Subject headings (all). |
|
ISBN |
ISBN |
ISBN(91 7170 355 1) ISBN(9781124926193) This search field looks for both the ten-digit and the currently used thirteen-digit International Standard Book Number (ISBN), where available. Spaces are required in the ten-digit ISBN searches (do not enter hyphens). The 13 digit ISBN works just fine with or without any spaces or hyphens |
|
Language |
LA |
LA(Spanish) Use to locate the original language of the document. |
|
Publication/order number |
DISPUB |
DISPUB(3130208) Search for a specific dissertation by publication number. This number appears in each citation. You must OMIT “AAT” from the ID number. You can include or omit any dashes. |
|
Publication year |
YR |
YR(2012) Use to find a specific publication year. |
|
References |
REF |
REF(nanotubes) 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). |
|
School location |
SCHLOC |
SCHLOC(Denmark) Lets you search for a school in a specific geographic location, such as state, province or country. From the Browse tab, you can browse by location to select from a list of the available locations. |
|
School name / code |
SCH |
SCHNAME(University of Michigan) SCH(sweden)
Search for dissertations granted by a specific school. Enter the school name or four-digit school code. You can use this field to search for a list of all schools within a particular country by entering the country name. |
|
Subject Heading(All) |
SU |
SU(accounts) This field searches all subject-like fields for dissertations or theses, meaning Subjects and Index terms (keywords). Use the Subject heading (all) search field to look for dissertations or theses about a specific subject. A search for the term “accounts,” will find documents with the term accounts, health savings accounts, checking accounts, etc. in the Subject or Index term (keyword) fields. To run an exact search where only “accounts” is retrieved in the Subject or Index term (keyword) fields and not terms that contain additional terms, search using EXACT. SU.EXACT(accounts) Subject terms conform to the ProQuest/UMI Controlled Vocabulary. When an author submits their dissertation or thesis to ProQuest, they must select one primary subject, and can optionally select two secondary subjects. ProQuest may also assign Subject terms to improve discoverability. See the Index terms (keywords) entry for additional information about Index terms (keywords). |
|
Supplemental file types |
SPTYPE |
SPTYPE(video) Use to search for dissertations containing supplemental files such as images, videos, documents or spreadsheets. Enter the supplemental file type (Audio, Code-Script, Data, Image, Other, PDF, Presentation, Spreadsheet, Text, Unknown, Video). To search for dissertations or theses containing any supplemental file types, enter mmalltypes in the Supplemental file types field. Alternatively, search for: sptype(audio) OR sptype(Code-Script) OR sptype(Data) OR sptype(Image) OR sptype(Other) OR sptype(PDF) OR sptype(Presentation) OR sptype(Spreadsheet) OR sptype(Text) OR sptype(Unknow)OR sptype(video) In some cases, you may have to download specific software or plug-ins in order to be able to view supplemental files. NOTE: Supplemental files content is only accessible from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses A&I subscribers can access Supplemental file types content from open access graduate works. |
|
Volume/issue (DVI) |
DISVOL |
DISVOL(DAI-B 56-02) Use to search for the DAI (Dissertation Abstracts International) database or the MAI (Master's Abstracts International) database. The default setting specifies a search across both. Use this field to narrow your search to social sciences and humanities (volume A) or sciences and engineering (volume B). Or search for specific issue numbers. Note: Limiting by volume or issue may not make sense if your subscription only covers a portion of the database. |