TUTORIAL: FINDING ARTICLES ONLINE WITH OMNIFILE ON EBSCOhost
Go to http://search.ebscohost.com.
Enter the DISD username and password and click LOGIN. If you have forgotten the username or password, please contact the DISD Library.
On the Basic Search screen, enter your search terms (the words you want to search for) and press the Enter key or click the Search button. In the example below, we are searching for the words LEED building:
The Basic Search looks for your search terms in key areas of the articles, such as the title and abstract. To find all the articles that mention your search terms anywhere in the article, click Search Options and select Also search within the full text of the articles.
Search Results
On the Search Results page, you will see how many articles were found near the top of the screen (1,105 in the example below):
Each result lists the author and title of the article, the magazine or journal in which the article was published, the date on which the article was published, and the pages on which the article appeared. This is called an article citation.
You can immediately read the full text of any article by clicking HTML Full Text or PDF Full Text just below the citation. Some articles are available only in HTML or only as PDF files. (HTML means that the article has been formatted to display on a web page, usually as plain text.)
Click on the title of any article in the Search Results to see more information about it and read the abstract (a brief summary of the article):
In the Tools menu along the right side of this page, you have the option to print a copy of the article, email the article to yourself or someone else, or save a copy of the article.
You can also get a citation for the article or listen to an audio version.
From any article page (pictured above), click Cite to see the citation for the article in APA, Chicago, MLA, and other styles:
If an article is available in HTML, you can also listen to the article read aloud (by a slightly robotic voice) or save the audio file to play on your mp3 player. From the article page (pictured above), click Listen to see the audio options:
Click the Play button to listen on your computer. Click the Download mp3 button to save the audio file to play on your mp3 player.
Click the Settings button (the round wheel) to slow down or speed up the reader.
If you get too many results, you can Refine your results by limiting the search to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals, to articles with PDF Full Text available, or to articles with a Publication Date within certain years:
Narrow to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals
Click Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals to narrow your results down to articles published in these journals. A scholarly journal, also called an academic journal or a peer-reviewed journal, is a journal with articles written by professors, researchers and other academic experts. When one of these experts writes an article, he or she sends it to a scholarly journal to consider for publication. The journal then sends the paper to several other experts in the field for them to review. The reviewers make notes not only about any errors, but also about anything that is unclear or misleading. The original author must fix these problems before the journal will publish the article; this is called the peer review process.
Narrow to PDF Full Text
Click PDF Full Text to narrow your results down to articles available as PDF files. This will cut out any articles that are available only in HTML.
Narrow by Publication Date
To Refine your results by limiting the Publication Date, click and drag the slider to change the date range and click Update. If we narrow our LEED building search down to articles published from 2011 through 2013, we reduce the number of Search Results from 1,105 to 426:
Narrow by Subject
If your original search results include some relevant articles and some that are completely irrelevant, narrow your results by selecting one more Subjects:
In this context, Subject means what an article is really about. These Subjects allow you to separate the articles that are really about your topic from the articles that just mention your topic in passing. In our example, we can narrow our results to articles with the Subject “Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design Green Building Rating System”. This cuts out, for example, an article about when to use a consultant and recommends using a consultant if you want the project to achieve LEED certification.
To narrow your results by Subject, select one or more of the Subjects listed and click Update. In our example, this brings the number of results from 426 down to 192:
Once you find an article that is relevant, another way to search is to use one of the Subjects assigned to that article. For example, the article below has 6 Subjects assigned to it:
If we click on Indoor air quality, we get 303 new results, all related to Indoor air quality.
If you don’t find what you need using the Basic Search, try the Advanced Search. From any page in OmniFile, click Search at the top left, and then click Advanced Search:
With Advanced Search, you can:
AND, OR and NOT
You can make your search more specific by using AND, OR, and NOT (these are called Boolean operators, and a search using those words is called a Boolean search):
In the example below, we are searching for recent articles about bar or lounge design, and we are limiting the results to articles available as PDF files so that we get the pictures.
If you go to http://search.ebscohost.com on a smartphone, you will be automatically directed to the mobile version of the site:
You can limit your search to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals or to articles with PDF Full Text available from the main search screen. Click Search Options to do an Advanced Search.
If you are on the mobile site and want to switch to the regular desktop site, click Full Site at the bottom of any page. If you want to switch back to the mobile version, scroll to the very bottom of any page and click Mobile Site.
Smartphone Apps
Another option for accessing OmniFile from your smartphone is to download the app. Scroll to the bottom of any page in OmniFile and click EBSCOhost iPhone and Android Applications:
Follow the instructions to download and authenticate the app. You will need the DISD username and password. If you have forgotten the username or password, please contact the DISD Library.
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