General Reference Center Gold
integrates a vast array of key business and general
interest titles from national news magazines and
encyclopedias to core business journals. It
features hyperlinks between and even within sources,
providing point-and-click navigation to related
topics and articles. For instance, you can click on
highlighted works within a full-text article from
The Columbia Encyclopedia and go right to
related articles within the encyclopedia. Many
articles also provide links to related sources
outside of the current article: reference books,
magazine and newspaper articles.
General Reference Center Gold
provides access to the following:
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service Newspaper
articles
- The New York Times
- The Wall Street Journal
- The Christian Science Monitor
- Children's magazines
- More than 20 reference books
- More than 4,500 titles including 3,500 in
full text
A 25-year backfile is also included.
All of the journals in General Reference
Center Gold are also included in
General
OneFile, along with hundreds of
additional journal titles.
(Please note that General Reference
Center Gold may be searched
simultaneously with several InfoTrac databases by
using
Thomson Gale PowerSearch).
You may access General Reference Center Gold
from anywhere with a valid APSU ID.
How To Search General Reference Center Gold
SEARCH TYPES: There are 4 search types:
basic, subject guide, publication, and advanced.
-
In an
advanced search, there are 3 search
boxes (you can add more rows) where you enter terms that relate to
your research topic.
There are pull-down menus where you select the
‘index’ to search. The default is Keyword, but there are many to
choose from, including author, subject, document title, person, word
count, etc.
-
In a basic search, there is a single box
where you can enter terms that relate to your research topic. Search
for terms as keywords (in article titles, subjects, abstracts), as
subjects, or as full text (anywhere in article). Example: drunk
driving.
-
In a
subject guide search, the term(s) you
enter in the search box are mapped against an online thesaurus and
relevant matches are displayed. If you type the words DUI or DWI or
drunk driving in a subject guide search, you will see that the
preferred term is driving while intoxicated.
Often you will
see subdivisions and related subjects to browse through.
Subdivisions target more specific aspects of a
subject; e.g., case studies, forecasts and trends, prevention,
public opinion, research, social policy, statistics. Related
subjects are classified into broader or narrower terms.
-
In a
publication search, you look for
articles from a known publication; e.g., Time or Newsweek. You see
coverage dates and a listing of available issues to browse. You can
also limit a search by publication title(s).
Wildcards: An asterisk (*) stands for any number of
characters, including none, and is especially useful when you want to
find all words that share the same root. A single question mark ?stands
for exactly one character (wom?n to match women or woman) while multiple
question marks stand for an equivalent number of characters. An
exclamation point (!) stands for one or no characters and is especially
useful when you want to match the singular and plural of a word but not
other forms or, when used inside a word, to match certain variant
spellings. For example, colo!r matches both
color (American) and
colour (British).
SEARCH RESULTS: Results are organized into tab groups
–
content areas that contain similar types of documents.
There are 4 tabs: Magazines & Journals, Reference, News (from
newspapers and newswires), and Multimedia. Not every tab may contain
items.
VIEW, MARK, PROCESS RESULTS: Your search
results display in reverse publication date order, although they can
be sorted by relevance instead.
The basic bibliographic information, full text
indicator (full-text, full-text with graphics , abstract, citation)
and document type (article, brief article, book review, author
abstract, case note, column, cover story, editorial, interview,
obituary) are listed.. Records display in MLA format. You can mark those articles you want to retain and then
print, e-mail, download
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