An abstract database does not necessarily contain the full text, but if we subscribe to something online, it will link out to where you need to go. Abstract databases index print resources in addition to online ones — especially those journals, books, and other documents that may not have been digitized.
Usually, abstract databases will include a Yale Links button to help you find an electronic copy from the library. You may also need to search the catalog for the item or use interlibrary loan if (a) an item hasn't been digitized or (b) it's not held in our collections.
If you have incomplete information about an older book from a citation, an abstract database is a great place to go to find the rest of the citation so you can search the library catalog or request the item through our interlibrary loan services. Librarians and interlibrary loan fulfillment staff use abstract databases all of the time to help you when citation information is incomplete.
Examples of abstract databases include GeoRef and several components of the ProQuest Natural Science Collection, which includes both full-text and abstract resources. Some of its abstract resources are the Meteorological and Geoastrophysical Abstracts, Toxicology Abstracts, Water Resources Abstracts, and Environmental Engineering Abstracts.
GeoRef is an excellent resource to use when looking for Earth and Planetary Sciences resources. This tab describes the basics of how to use it in your research. Please look above for the tab on the ProQuest Natural Science Collection if you want information about doing interdisciplinary geosciences searches, especially those focused on air, climate, and geobiology.
GeoRef is the most comprehensive abstract database in the field, and it grows by at least 80,000 references a year (you publish a lot!). It contains journals, books, maps, and reports. The database also includes masters' and doctoral dissertations from US and Canadian universities.
We subscribe to GeoRef on the GeoScienceWorld platform.
GeoScienceWorld is a complex resources that contains many pieces. It contains:
When you search for content on GeoScienceWorld, all of your searches will include GeoRef abstracts.
GeoRef contains several very helpful search fields:
Let's look at an example. I decided to search for research that contains the term paleomagnetism in the title and Africa in the abstract. The search gives me 218 GeoRef results.
Note 1: If I had kept all of the other options checked, like journal article and so on, I would have found 238 results.
Note 2: If you're using Boolean searching, the "Add Group" function will set up a way for you to AND/OR/NOT two separate groupings of terms. This is most useful for heavy-duty searching.
The result set includes many GeoRef records.
As shown in the image above, the YaleLinks button is located at the bottom of the individual item record. You can use CTRL (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ (Mac) + ↓ to quickly go to the bottom of the page.
If the Yale Links button doesn't show, it means that there may not be an online version; sometimes, however, things that are online somewhere (digitized or otherwise) may not show the button. There is still a way to seamlessly get to where you need to go. First, click on the article title to get to the record page. Now, you have three options.
(1) Click on the DOI in the individual GeoRef record, if there is a DOI.
(2) Use the DOI and the YUL citation lookup tool to find the information, which is available on the Journals A-Z page.
(3) Because older articles (like this one from 1961) may not have DOIs, you can use the YUL citation lookup form to find these. Since we likely have these in print and not online, depending on how far back our online access goes, you can also search the catalog for the journal title and request a scan of the article.
This should get you started with using GeoRef. Good luck!
ProQuest's Natural Science Collection combines several of the vendor's databases into one product with a single search box:
Coverage runs from 1946-present, with robust, human-curated indexing. It will be particularly useful to researchers performing advanced searches, with time-saving search limits.
Its full-text resources range from scholarly journals, trade and industry journals, and technical reports to magazines, conference proceedings, and government publications. Notable items within the database are the Water Resources Abstracts, EIS: Digest of Environmental Impact Statements, Environmental Engineering Abstracts, Pollution Abstracts, Meteorological and Geoastrophysical Abstracts, and Toxicology Abstracts.
Examples of useful search limits include:
Depending on what you're searching for, the advanced search will also allow you to search for conference names, report numbers, sponsors, publishers, and more. You can also search the collection individually from the main page.
The following screenshots will walk you through a quick search within the Natural Science Collection.
Starting from the main page, let's do a search for geochemistry deep marine sediments.
In the results set, we can limit to full text or peer-reviewed resources in the left-hand menu. In the main results set, a searcher can view the abstract/details or click the Yale Links button to find full text for items that are not in ProQuest.
Items that are present in ProQuest will have links to the full text. Some may have an open access symbol at the far right. Items with a greater level of indexing will display mini thumbnails of images found within the paper.
On the results set screen, we can also use the left sidebar to select some sub-databases included in the Natural Science Collection. Let's select a few of them.
When you apply a search results filter, the applied filters will show in the left sidebar. Click the X to remove any of the options from your selection.
When we click on a record, some other types of information will appear. Here, we see clickable subjects, classifications, and identifier/keywords.
Clicking on a subject will take us back to the search. Below is everything that has the subject "deep sea sediments" applied. Please note that some other terms may be more useful for finding a thorough results set.
The screenshot examples have shown you the basic search. The advanced search is located in the link bar below the name "Natural Science Collection." Once there, you can construct an advanced query.
Feel free to contact me with any specific questions about using the database.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) provides a very comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses and is the official digital dissertations archive for the Library of Congress. The database provides full text for most dissertations after 1997, and older materials that have not been digitized are available for purchase as printed copies.
First, visit our Get It @Yale page to familiarize yourself with our services.
If we do not have access to a resource, use our Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service. It comes at no cost to you, and it is great for journal articles, dissertations, and hard-to-find items.
We also have a service called Borrow Direct, which is useful for physical books and other items. During the pandemic, that service is on hold until we have 4 libraries in the consortium that are prepared to restart inter-institutional borrowing.
Search for the journal you want on this page: http://wa4py6yj8t.search.serialssolutions.com/?L=WA4PY6YJ8T&tab=JOURNALS. If the journal isn't there, we probably do not have it electronically. If the journal is there, look at the date information below its title. You can also use the Citation Linker to look up a specific article.
Do we have it in print? We don't have electronic back files for all of our journals. Search in QuickSearch Books+ for the journal title and be patient. If it's an international journal — which often means that the original language of the journal is German or Russian — there may be some interesting transliteration or translation idiosyncrasies in the library catalog. English-language names are often mapped to the original language's publication name.
We recommend enclosing any journal title in quotation marks (e.g., "Journal of Interesting Science") so the catalog searches for the phrase instead of each individual word. You can also search for the journal by its 8-digit ISSN. (But be careful, as some journals have multiple ISSNs for electronic, print, and some legacy versions.) If you spend more than 20 minutes on this, send your subject librarian an email.
If you have tried all of the above and we do not seem to have it, use Interlibrary Loan or contact your subject specialist.
If you tried everything, it says we have access, and you appear to not have access, several things could be going wrong. First, if you are off-campus, double check that you are on the VPN or that you are using the Yale proxy URL to access the resource.
You can easily tell if you are on the VPN by visiting this page. If you've lost a VPN connection, that page will tell you. If you are using the proxy URL, "yale.idm.oclc.org" will be somewhere in the URL. You can also try to add https://yale.idm.oclc.org/login?url= to an https:// URL to enable the proxy server. An example of this in practice is https://yale.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://webofknowledge.com.
Most often, problems connecting to resources happen because a website has saved cookies in your browser. Clear your browser's cookies for the journal/aggregator's web site and try again.
If none of the above works, contact your subject specialist. Your subject specialist may loop in others, such as the e-resources troubleshooting team.
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