Ebsco Help
Although it is a powerful tool, Ebsco is a somewhat difficult online resource to use to its full potential. Unlike Proquest, there are no convenient drop-down menus to help you choose Boolean operators, search types and the like. Nor are there separate boxes for each search term. You will have to use nesting instead.
Also, there are subtle differences in how each database provided by Ebsco is searched. Unless you're getting really fancy, it shouldn't make too much of a difference, but it is something you should be aware of in case you start getting frustrated.
Below is a screenshot or picture of the basic search page from Ebsco's MasterFILE Select database. The numbers are links to explanations below. Within each explanation, the links
are to definitions in the Useful terms page.
1 - These three tabs, "Basic Search," "Advanced Search" and "Choose Databases," stay the same in every Ebsco database. Right now, the differently colored tab indicates we are using "Basic Search." If this was a real Ebsco page, you would click on the tabs to switch between them.
There is not enough of a difference between "Basic Search" and "Advanced Search" to spend time on it here. If you are feeling ambitious, feel free to experiment. "Choose Databases" is another matter, however.
Clicking on "Choose databases" will take you to a new page which lists all the Ebsco databases your library card gives you access to. Besides a brief description of the database's contents, there are also usually two links, "Title List" and "More information." Databases that contain only one title, such as Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia do not have a "Title List" link.
Clicking on "Title List" opens up a new page where you can search to see if a particular journal, magazine or newspaper is covered by the database. Be careful, though, the page has two search boxes. The top one searches within the database. You want to use the bottom search box to find titles.
The "More Information" link does just that. Clicking on it will take you to a new page that includes a more detailed description of the database, search tips, a searchable fields section (see 3 below and also search type). There is also a "where to send your comments" section. Clicking on the "Submit any questions..." link will open up a page with a form for questions which is nice, but also on the top of that page there are links to tutorials, and Support Materials (a fancy name for user manuals).
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2 - The number and functions of these buttons vary depending upon which Ebsco database you are using. Generally they are used to choose between search types. Keyword search is the easiest to use, but you need to use Boolean operators or else it will treat your search terms as a phrase.
Subject searches are trickier because you need to use the exact term used by the database to describe the topic you are interested in or else you'll get nothing. Also, the way Ebsco handles subject searches varies from database to database. In MasterFILE Select, you get a page where your results are organized by subject. In Academic Search Elite the "subject terms" button takes you to a page where you can find the appropriate subject to add to your search terms. Also Ebsco has the alarming habit of replacing "su" (short for subject) with "de" (short for descriptor), even though "de" doesn't appear in the searchable fields link mentioned in 1 above and discussed in 3 below.
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3 – With some exceptions, Ebsco only gives you one place to enter search terms, so if you want to search more than one word or a phrase, you will have to use tools like Boolean operators and nesting.
Let's say we are looking for articles on Bugatti or Ferarri appearances at those fancy antique automobile shows, Concours d'Elegances. Good keywords to try are "Bugatti," "Ferrari" and "Concours." However, since Ebsco's default treats search terms as a phrase, the following search, 
will give you no results because there are no articles in the database that have the three words, Bugatti, Ferarri and Concours in a row.
We can add the Boolean operator "and" to the search like this: 
. This works fine if we are looking for articles that are about concours and both Ferraris and Bugattis.
However, if we want articles about either Bugattis or Ferraris, then we have to use nesting and the Boolean operator or. We will "nest" Ferrari and Bugatti inside parentheses and connect them with an "or." This tells the database to look for articles that have either word in them. We will then connect that instruction with "concours" using and so that the search looks like this: 
.
The search can be narrowed further by changing the search type from keyword to something such as subject. Instead of Proquest's drop-down menus, Ebsco requires you to use a particular code that you get from the searchable fields discussed in 1 above. So for subject we type "SU" in front of the words. Like this:
In this example we are looking for articles that have the subject of either "ferrari" or "bugatti" and that have the keyword "concours" in the abstract or citation.
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4 - These "limiters" are a way of reducing the results generated by a particular search. Peer Reviewed means almost the same thing as Scholarly Journals. Don't forget that if the particular Ebsco database you are using does not have the full text of an article, another Ebsco database or Proquest might. Publication type, number of pages and articles with images are confusing to use and not particularly helpful.
5 - As you would expect, the "expanders" are ways to increase the results or "hits" generated by a particular search.
"Related words" can be a little tricky. It appears to include words that may have related spellings, but not words that embody related concepts or subjects.
Using the "search within the full text of the articles" features can really expand the number of hits. If you are using a common word as a search term, then you may get way more results than you want. However, searching for a phrase, such as "I am not a crook," within article texts can be very useful.
Choosing "Automatically "And" search terms" changes Ebsco's default phrase-like search into a search more like Google's, where each word in the search is treated as if they are connected by an invisible boolean operator "and."
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