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SPORTDiscus

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Connecting to SPORTDiscus 
  1. Click on Search the Research Databases on the Randall Library Home Page http://library.uncwil.edu.  Databases are listed alphabetically.
  2. Select "S" and then choose SPORTDiscus from the list.
If you are connecting to SPORTDiscus from off campus, complete instructions for off-campus set up are located at http://library.uncwil.edu/homelist.html.
Searching SPORTDiscus

It is important to note that, although thesearches are given in lowercase, SPORTDiscus is not case-sensitive; whether your search terms are entered in upper- or lower-case, the same records will be retrieved. Search statements consist of a) literal words and b) logical words.

Literal Words
Literal words are key words that are important to the topic. Let's look at two topics: first, you want information on people who have a deficiency of nessary vitamins. The literal (key) words you should choose would be "vitamins," "deficiency." Another topic could be a comparison of deficiency of vitamins and vitamins. The literal (key) words would be "vitamins," "vitamins," and "deficiency."

Logical words, also called "operators," instruct the system to retrieve records containing the literal words according to the logic assigned.
COMBINING SEARCHES
AND retrieves records containing BOTH words. For instance, the search statement, "vitamins and deficiency," retrieves records that contain both words. AND is restrictive.
WITH retrieves records with both search terms in the same field. For example, the statement "vitamins and deficiency" retrieves records in which the two words, "vitamins" and "deficiency" appear in a single field, but they may be separated by several sentences.
NEAR retrieves records with both search terms in the same sentence. For example, the statement "vitamins near deficiency" retrieves records in which both terms, "vitamins" and "deficiency" appear in the same sentence, but in any order.
NOTE: Add a number next to near to specify how close the terms are to appear to each other. For example "elder near2 abuse" retrieves records in which the words "elder" and "abuse" appear within two words of each other.
OR retrieves records containing EITHER word. For instance, the search statement, "vitamins or minerials," retrieves records containing either "vitamins" or "minerials." The records do not have to contain both words. OR is expansive.

USING PARENTHESES

Search statements are complex when you use more than one operator in a statement, especially "AND" (or one of its variants) and "OR." Placing parentheses around "vitamins or minerals" nests those two words, so that the system knows the order in which to search. To put it simply, the numbers of records comes out right when you use parentheses.
Example: deficiency and (vitamins or minerals)

TRUNCATION AND WILDCARDS
The truncation and wildcard symbols can be used anywhere in your search term, except as the first character

* You can use the truncation symbol (*) as a substitute for any string of zero or more characters in your search term.

Example: the search indy* retrieves any record containing "indy", "indys", "indy-car", etc.

?You can use the wildcard symbol (?) as a substitute for one character or none.

Example: the search m?cdonald retrieves records containing "McDonald" or "MacDonald

LIMIT FIELDS

The limit fields listed below are specially indexed fields that have relatively few possible values. They allow you to limit your searches to records of a particular characteristic, such as type of publication or language of text.


(DT)
Document Type		 The document types are listed below; search with or without hyphens.
audiocassette, book-analytic, CD-ROM, computer-disk, microform, monograph-book, serial-article, thesis, URL & videotape
Search Example: to find articles- dt=serial
(LA)
Language		 The LA field indicates the language or languages of the document.
Search Example: to find article in french-  la=french
(LE)
Level		 For specific retrieval, each document is assigned one of the following levels of complexity:
Basic - These documents contain easily understood articles including sport-specific reports, sport techniques, biographies, and directories.
Intermediate. These documents consist of more technical and detailed articles and reviews.
Advanced - These documents contain only original scientific research.
Search Example: to find intermediate level documents- le=intermediate
(PY)
Publication Year		 The PY field provides the year in which the document was published; the
date is estimated if not precisely known.
You can search the PY field with the following operators:
specific year,
py=1992		 within a range,
such as py=1991-1993		 > greater than,
such as py>1992
< less than,
such as py<1991		 >= greater than or equal to,
such as py>=1992		 <= less than or equal to,
such as py<=1990

What is the SPORT Thesaurus?
SPORTDiscus has an interactive online subject thesaurus comprised of over 27,000 terms arranged in hierarchies representing major subject areas The thesaurus provides a standard set of terms used to describe subject matter and index records in the database by their subject. Each record in the database has these controlled descriptors, which describe the main topics of the article. Please see the SPORT Thesaurus (1994) for a complete listing of these terms.

Does Randall Library Own the Article Cited?

To find out if Randall Library has the periodical cited, open a second browser window in Internet Explorer or Netscape. Once you have the second window open to the Library Homepage, perform a Journal Title search in the Library Catalog, if we own the title there will be a record in the system. Periodicals are located on the ground floor of Randall Library.

Printing Citations
  1. Check the article abstracts you want to send by pressing the mouse in the box to the left of the abstract.
  2. Select the "Print" icon to the right of the search screen.
  3. Select the options you would like your print out to have.
  4. Click on the "Print" button.
Emailing Citations

1. Check the article abstracts you want to send by clicking in the box to the left of the abstract.
2. Select the "email" button to the right of the search screen. The e-mail delivery screen appears.
3. In the "Mail Records to:" box, type in a complete e-mail address.
4. In the "Mail Subject" box, type "SPORTDiscus" or another phrase that describes your search.

Specialized Searches
Example 1
Find fairly recent publications concerning the use of anabolic steroids at the college level.
1. Search for records containing "anabolic-steroid".
2. Combine the results with a truncated search for variations of the root term "colleg", such as "college", "colleges", and "collegiate": colleg*
3. Limit the results to information published later than 1993: and py>1993
Example 2
Find magazine articles published in English about weight training in football.
1. Search for "football" and "weight training" in the Descriptors (DE) field: football- in de and weight-training in de
2. Limit the results to English-language articles: and dt=serial and la=english
Example 3
Find a minor-league baseball park in Massachusetts.
1. Search for occurrences of "minor-league"
2. Combine the results with a search for "baseball": and baseball
3. Further combine the results with a search for "Massachusetts": and massachusetts
Example 4
Using the Index to Find an Author
To locate an author, look up the last name in the Index. A segment of the Index beginning with the author's last name will be listed; included are all variations of the name that appear in the database. For example, if you look up lupica, you will find "LUPICA" and "LUPICA-M". Select and search for the appropriate variations and you will retrieve all documents written by that author. You can also search for an author in the Author (AU) field.

Last Update: December 12, 2005

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