FirstSearch:  An Online Introduction

Browse Index:  A Way to See What's in the Database

FirstSearch has a feature called Browse Index.

By browsing the index terms first, you can see if your search word, or a related word, is in the database.

You might want to Browse the Index before your search in order to check for spellings or precise phrases.

Or if your search Results were not good, you might want to Browse the Index to see if your spelling was correct.

To Browse the Index:

Let's say we are looking for articles about the writer Don Delillo, but we can't remember exactly how his name is spelled.
Browsing the Subject Index will let us see what words are in the index.
We'll use the Humanities Abstracts as our database.

1.   Choose the Index to want to Browse.  Subject Index is already chosen.

2.  Click the "Browse Index" button.    A Browse Index box pops up. 
3.  Type your word or phrase in the box.  We'll type "Delil," since we can't remember how his name is spelled.
4.  Click the "OK" button.

5.  Now we click on the Index term we want to Search.  The term will be moved to the Search Screen for us.

Now we are back at the Search Screen, and the Index term we selected appears in the "Search for" box.
6.  We would click the "Start Search" button to perform our search.

Next:  Hyperlink Searching

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