FirstSearch:  An Online Introduction

The History Function:  Viewing and Combining Your Previous Searches

History lets you combine your previous searches in 2 ways:
1.  You can combine previous searches with other terms.
2.  You can combine your previous searches with each other.

History Notes:

• You must enter one or more searches before you can use History.
• You can use only the searches done in the current database.
• When you change databases, FirstSearch deletes the list of your previous searches and starts a new list.

1. Combining  a previous Search with another term.

Let's look at an example from the CINAHL database.
We search "nursing w students" again, and retrieve over 1800 Records.
We decide that's too broad, so we can use History to narrow our topic.
From the Results page, we click the Search icon.

Now we click the "History" button.

Now we are at the History screen.
Let's say we want to see items on nursing students and the elderly.
We can combine our previous Search with the term elderly.
1.  We type elderly in the "Search for" box.
2.  We click the AND button.
3.  We Select our Previous Search #1 by clicking in its button.
4.  Now we click the "Search/Combine" button.

FirstSearch will run a new search, finding any Records in our Search #1 that also have the term elderly.

This Search retrieves 43 Records. 

2.  Combining your previous searches with each other

Here's a History screen with 7 searches.
Let's say we want to combine some of our searches.
We want any items on nursing students and hospice (#6), or nursing students and elderly (#2), or nursing students and death (#9).
1. We Select Previous Searches #2, #6, and #9 by clicking their buttons.
2.  We choose the Connector OR by clicking its button.
3.  We click the "Search/Combine button".

FirstSearch will perform a new search, retrieving any Records that appeared in Search #2 or Search #6 or Search #9

This retrieves 77 Records. 

Next up:  Advanced Searching

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