Using HighBeam Library

In this Section

HighBeam™ Library Overview
Using HighBeam™ Library
Researching using Natural Language
Researching using Boolean Search
Advanced Searching options
Searching by Author, Publication or Date
Finding articles from ethnic, International, or Small Press Publications

HighBeam Library combines an editorially selected collection of thousands of authoritative sources including millions of credible free and paid articles with tools to find, organize and share information. Our collection includes more than 60 million credible documents from over 3,500 newspapers, magazines, journals, transcripts and wide-ranging reference titles – updated daily and going back 23 years. Most of our Premium articles are not available elsewhere on the Web. For a complete list of our sources, click here. HighBeam Library offers many time-saving tools to help you find your answers faster. Basic Members of HighBeam Research can search Library and view previews of articles. Full Members have unlimited access the full texts of all articles and to our innovative research tools that allow you to build your own search (select publications to include or exclude from your search), save articles and searches, sort results by date or relevance and share articles (e-mail, blog, export texts to Word).

HighBeam Library is but one component of the HighBeam Research Engine. For information on HighBeam Web, click here. For information on HighBeam Reference, click here.

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To start your research, simply enter your search term in the box at the top of the HighBeam Research home page. You can get to that page by clicking on the "Library" tab. Your search term can be a question, phrase, or just keywords. The HighBeam Research Engine will search every document in the Library collection for the search term you type.

After entering your search term, you may choose which types of sources to include in your search. By default, the HighBeam Research Engine selects all types of sources. If you do not want to search all publications, select only the source types you want included in your search.

You can select from:

Documents: our daily updated collection of newspapers, magazines and journals, transcripts from radio and TV programs, and books.

Images and Maps: an extensive collection of images from photo archives, and maps of all kinds for many different purposes.

Reference: Reference books, almanacs, encyclopedias and more.

You can choose your sources more specifically by using Advanced Search or by creating a Boolean search.

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The HighBeam Research Engine automatically processes all searches in "Natural Language". You may enter full sentences, questions, and phrases in any form, with or without punctuation. For best results, include context in your search terms. For example, if you are searching for information about the digital camera market, you might want to type:

digital camera sales
Or
digital camera makers

If you wish to find a document that includes a particular phrase, enter that phrase into search box, surrounded by quotation marks. For example, you may enter quotes from Shakespeare, poetry, or commonly used phrases, such as: "cowards die many times before their death."

You may also simply enter a question, just as you would ask a person. For example:

Does a low-carb diet work?
What is strategic planning?
What is the principle export of Kenya?
How do I prevent identity theft?

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Boolean Searches

A Boolean search allows you to define your search more specifically than a natural language search. By using operators such as AND, OR and AND NOT, in your search term, you can narrow your search to find the most relevant documents.

To do a Boolean search, click "Build a Boolean Search". On the Boolean search page, enter the words or phrases you want to find and connect them with Boolean operators. A Boolean search phrase can contain up to five keywords or phrases. Use any combination of the operators for more complex searches.

AND (and) - Use the AND operator between any two search terms to find articles containing both terms. For example, "atoms AND molecules AND elements" will return only documents that contain all three words.

OR (or) - Use the OR operator between any two search terms to find articles containing either of the two terms. For example, "atoms OR molecules OR elements" will return all documents that contain at least one of the words.

AND NOT (and not) - Use the AND NOT operator between any two search terms to find articles that do not include the term immediately following the NOT. Best when used in combination with one or more terms that you do want to find. For example, "diabetes AND obesity AND NOT pregnancy" will return only documents that contain both the words "diabetes" and "obesity" but only if those documents do not contain the word "pregnancy".

More examples of Correct Boolean Command Syntax

Example 1: halogen AND florescent AND light or light bulb
Example 2: big AND blue and IBM and not mainframe
Example 3: polystyrene AND recycle
Example 4: DNA and cell structure AND biological AND genetics
Example 5: MRI or magnetic and resonance and imaging

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Many times, you can find the exact answer to your question in an article near the top of the results list. Other times, you might need to redirect or focus your search by changing a few search options.

To change your search words and options, click on Advanced Search at the top of the page.

Advanced search will display the information from your previous search so you can modify the criteria instead of entering it from scratch. These are some of the options on the Advanced search page:

Change your search text- For natural language searches, simply change your search words or ask another question. For Boolean searches, change either the search terms or the Boolean operators you specified previously. Refer to Entering Effective Search Text for more information.

Change source type selections - Selecting appropriate source types can also help focus your search results.

Change other search options - By setting different advanced searching options you can limit a search by publication date, author, or publication name.

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With Advanced searching, you can narrow any search by publication date, specific author, or publication name. To do a search by author, enter a name in the Author field on the Advanced search page. A Question or Keyword is required in the search box.

There are numerous ethnic, international and small press publications that contribute to the breadth of the Library collection. The HighBeam Research Engine can provide excellent results even when you are searching for foreign words or unusual terms. For example, search for a term such as reciclaje (recycling in Spanish) and you will find articles from an array of Spanish language publications.

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