Multidatabase: Home

Central Index is a search tool that provides keyword searching across a wide (but not comprehensive) selection of materials: books, journals, videos, web pages, and other sources. It gathers information from many resources and allows you to search across them simultaneously. This tool is similar in many ways to the Google Scholar search tool, but offers much more precise searching.

                                  Short video showing the basics of searching and downloading materials and our Central Index searching tips. 

                  NOTE: You will need to login on the top right to obtain access to the full text material.

                  NOTE: Use the Expand option on the top left of the results page to locate and request materials we do not immediately own/lease.

SEARCHING HINTS:

     NOTE: This full text search tool does not utilize subject headings -- but it does offer Subject searching (for major emphasis of keyword terms) and facets on the left side of the search results page that help in narrowing your results. See the tools below for more powerful alternative search options in certain subject areas.    

• Remember to use synonyms for your key concepts -- for example (car or automobile) and (accident or collision).
• Place phrases within quote marks for precision. Example: "event horizon"
• Use the Advanced search to combine concepts and search fields. 
• Use the Subject search option to identify strong emphasis of specific search terms or phrases (in quotes).
• Refine your initial results with both additional terms and the result screen left-side facets (sub-clusters of results by subject terms, date, material type, etc.).
• Use subject terms found within specific articles to further narrow your results with controlled vocabulary.
• Use the Expand My Results option to discover additional materials we would need to Borrow From Other Libraries.
• Once you have completed your search, you may want to expand your searching using multidisciplinary news resources, and perhaps specialized search tools such as Scopus which offer enhanced discovery through creative techniques such as citation tracking.

 The Central Index is NOT the best place to start if you are looking for the following types of information:

• news...more complete news sources are found on our News Resources page
• facts...a collection of dictionaries and encyclopedias can be search on our Facts/Definitions page
• journal articles covered in a core set of 800 journals (Academic Search Complete)
• journal articles when there is deeper subject indexing...perform more precise searching in our subject indexes
• business data is located using our business Help page
• music performances and scores are found using our music Help page

Quick Help Videos:

• See a video demonstration of Central Index options.
• Our Central Index advanced searching tips (keywords, subject terms, facets).
• Facets and subject term emphasis for multidisciplinary subjects.
• Searching using relevancy ranking and then restrict by dates.
• Printing from the book catalog or the Central Index.
• capture a citation in various styles.
• use the Pin option to download records from our new book catalog or Central Index into Zotero.
• use the Zotero button to quickly download book catalog results.
• use the pin process first - and then the Zotero button to download fulltext journal articles from the Central Index.

While the Central Index covers many materials, it is not comprehensive, and other library tools provide complimentary search options for journal articles:

•  Academic Search Complete provides searching across a core collection of approximately 800 multi-disciplinary journals, and offers immediate full text articles for most of the results. Good for basic searching.
• Scopus searches across a wide range of journal articles, and provides immediate links to the full text of many, while offering 3-day turnaround on those we need to borrow from other libraries. It also offers ranking of articles and journals by impact based upon citation patterns. You can follow a research front using this tool.
• More comprehensive searching is provided for some disciplines using our subject specific journal indexes.

One additional free search tool to consider is Summon (from Princeton). You will see information about journal articles, books, and other materials...but you will not have links to the full text materials.

This page describes the Central Index search tool, and compares the tool to other library search engines and journal indexes.

Some of the key databases covered in this tool include:

• Ethnic Newswatch
• Historical Newspapers (NYT, WSJ, Chicago Trib) NOTE: not Newspaper Source which is in EBSCO
• Lexis Nexis (Uni)
• Reference books (chapters/entries)
• Book chapters (from many, but not all publishers)
• Book reviews
• journals: Ovid, JSTOR, SAGE, Science Direct
• HathiTrust public domain ebooks
• Videos (DVD, web stuff, and a few from Films on Demand)
• Open Access materials (dissertations, ebooks, tech reports, Open Access materials)
• Web resources (data sets, web pages from societies/associations, other…???)

What is not covered (see our complete list of tools):

• in-depth journal subject indexing (EBSCO tools)
• CREDO (dictionaries, encyclopedias)
• eHRAF (anthropology/sociology)
• Naxos (music)
• OED (language dictionary)
• primary resources in databases such as African American Hisrorical Serials, Arte Publico, and American Antiquarian Society Periodicals
• Oxford Music (Groves music dictionary)
• SCOPUS (interdisciplinary journals with citation tracking and impact factors)
• S&P and PrivCo and ValueLine (business data)
• Streaming videos (two commercial video platforms)
• WorldCat (international book catalog)

Books coverage ... simultaneously search across multiple platforms.

The Central Index provides searching across many of our ebook platforms ... EBSCOhost ebooks, EBL ebooks, ProQuest ebooks, HathiTrust public domain books, American Dissertation Database fulltext materials ... and includes our local SXU ebook purchases. 

• After your results appear, select "Books" under the Resource Type category on the left to limit to our full text materials.
• Use the Collection facet near the bottom of the left column to narrow your results to a specific e-book platform.

Central Index ... what ebook material is covered...and what is not immediately available?

• ebooks SXU or the state-wide CARLI consortium has purchased
• many ebooks from free sources (societies, some publishers)
• full text searching into chapter levels in ebooks to which we have access

HathiTrust = Google Books digitization project of materials across many large libraries

• over one million "public domain" titles which can be searched/viewed by anyone
  • these are not in our catalog, so they must be searched using ???
• all titles that have been digitized, but viewing is restricted due to copyright protection 
  • access to these books requires either I-Share borrowing or Borrow From Other Libraries.