JSTOR
- Archival journal collections in the humanities, social sciences and sciences.
- Coverage begins at the first volume and issue of the journal ever published.
Truncation and wildcards
- Asterisk * replaces 0...n symbols and it can be used anywhere except in the beginning of the word: behavio* > behavio(u)r, behaviorist, behavio(u)rism...
- Question mark ? replaces one symbol: organi?ation* > organizational, organisations...
- Word roots must contain at least three letters preceding a wildcard:
an*esthe* | anesthe* OR anaesthe*
- Searching for different written forms with the symbol ~ (so-called fuzzy search)
dostoyevsky~ > dostoyevsky, dostoevsky, dostoievski, dostoevsky, dostoyevski, dostoevskii, dostoevski
Phrase inside quotation marks: Truncation or other symbols attached to the search term cannot be used.
"united nations"
"self image" > self-image, self image; "self-image" > self-image, self image
Boolean operators
- AND is the default operator so it can be left out: peace* "united nations"
- Operator OR searches for different options: "league of nations" OR "united nations"
- NOT is an unconditional operation: "league of nations" NOT "united nations"
- The order of precedence is as follows: 1. AND, 2. OR. Parentheses can be added to override the order of precedence: parentheses are always processed first.
"currency reform" AND (russia OR "soviet union")
Proximity operators
- Search terms can be in any order.
- Truncation or other symbols attached to the search term cannot be used.
- Phrases cannot be used either.
- Proximity is expressed with the tilde symbol ~ and a number. The search terms are written inside quotation marks.
"debt forgiveness"~10
"learn write"~3 OR "learning writing"~3
"music education classical"~5
- In Advanced Search proximity (NEAR 5, 10, 25) can be chosen from a drop-down menu. Truncation or other symbols attached to the search term cannot be used. Phrases cannot be used either.
Searching from different fields in Advanced Search
- In Full text search the search terms are retrieved from the text in articles. Searching with common words gives many references.
- In Author search the search terms are retrieved from the writers of the articles and from the people being criticized. Putting quotation marks around the first and last names (or initial letters) ensures that they are searched from the same name. The order of the first and last names does not matter: sibelius jean = jean sibelius
- In Item title search the search terms are retrieved from the titles of articles and books. This is worth trying if full text search gives too many references.
- In Abstract search the search terms are retrieved from the abstracts of articles. Only about 10% of the articles has an abstract.
- In Caption search the search terms are retrieved from the captions of pictures in articles. Some images do not contain captions.
