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Dissertation Abstracts
Database Guide

NOTE: Use of this database is limited to valid patrons of
OhioLINK member institutions.


WHAT IS DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS?
Dissertation Abstracts provides citations and abstracts to more
than 1,000,000 doctoral dissertations and 45,000 masters theses
from 550 institutions in North America and Europe. Approxmiately
40,000 entries are added per year. OhioLINK updates the database
monthly.

The database includes:
Most North American dissertations published since 1861.
350-word abstracts for dissertations since 1980.
150-word abstracts for masters theses since 1988.
Dissertations from many European institutions since 1988.

In addition to author, title and abstract, citations include
information such as degree and award date, and in some records,
the name of the advisor.

HOW TO ACCESS DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS
1. Access Dissertation Abstracts from your local library system
or telnet to OhioLINK:
telnet cat.ohiolink.edu
Login: ohiolink

2. Choose "Research Databases" from the OhioLINK main menu and
select Dissertation Abstracts.

You can search Dissertation Abstracts by the following indexes:
Author
Title
Words in subjects and titles
Subject/Subject Code*
Institution Code*
ISBN
UMI publication number
*Codes are listed in the current directory.

SEARCH HINTS
*You do not need to press ENTER to activate menu options.

*Press ESC to return to the previous screen.

*Use specific search words whenever possible. 
 For example: industrial waste (rather than pollution or environment)

*Use your own words. If nothing useful is found, try to think
of synonyms or alternative ways to express concepts. Refer to
a thesaurus or dictionary.

*To search for words with the same root or initial letters
(this practice is called truncation), type an asterisk (*) at
the end of the root.
     For example: use* will find use, uses, used and user.

*In a WORDS search, two or more words can be entered to
retrieve articles that include both words.         
           For example: evaluation computers 
            will find articles about the evaluation of computers.

*Type a vertical bar (|) after one-word titles. This saves
time finding other titles that contain the search word as part
of a longer title.

EXPANDING A SEARCH
Type OR between words with similar meaning to expand the
number of items found for browsing. You will get articles
containing EITHER word.
	      For example:  cars or automobiles

You can also use an asterisk to retrieve all words with the
same root.
           For example: medic* finds medicine, medical, medicinal, etc.

Browse by company name and look at other nearby entries for
additional material about the same company or business
interest.

NARROWING A SEARCH
If you retrieve too many results, you can reduce the result
set by applying more specific criteria. Using the "L>Limit"
option from the bottom of the screen (you may need to select
"O>Other options" to find "L>Limit"), specify criteria such as
year of publication or words in the subject, author, or title.
Specify all desired limits BEFORE selecting "F>Find".

EXPORTING A SEARCH
"Exporting a Search" means that you can save the results of
your search on diskette or hard disk for later use. This
feature requires that you are working on a workstation that
has capture capability (e.g. Kermit, NCSA Telnet, etc.) and a
floppy drive or hard disk. See the guide "Downloading Records
from OhioLINK-I" for full instructions. These are the basic
steps for exporting:

1. Choose E>Export from the bottom of any search result to
place it in a temporary save file. You can save as many files
as will fit on your diskette.

2. IMPORTANT: When you are finished saving files and are ready
to exit Dissertation Abstracts, choose E>Export/VIEW Save File
from the Dissertation Abstracts main menu to send all of the
saved files to diskette or hard disk. 



Written/compiled by Elizabeth Timmons, director of publications, OhioLINK
Copyright 1994 Wright State University
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