Library Tutorial - Searching Electronic Databases - Field Searching

Sometimes you want to do more than just search for a topic. You might want to find articles:

• Written by a particular author
• Published in a particular journal
• Published in a particular year

Each record contains fields such as author, journal title, article title, page numbers, and date.  Often, you can confine your search to one of the fields to focus the results.  Typing brown into a subject search would retrieve records that mention the color; typing brown into an author field search would give you the articles written by Somebody Brown.  

Some databases have drop-down menus next to the search box that allows you to limit your search to certain fields.  Others make you click on an icon to do an author or title or journal search.  And still others do not allow you to do field searching at all.  Once again, experiment, read the online help, and ask a reference librarian for assistance.