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Welcome to Using DIALINDEX: A Database Finding Tool. Dialog has a number of tools available to help you decide which database or databases are right for your search. One of these is DIALINDEX. This short module illustrates what DIALINDEX is, why you should use it and provides examples to show you how to use it. The module assumes that you are familiar with how to conduct a basic search on Dialog. It may also serve as a refresher on DIALINDEX so you can get to the right databases faster. The content found on Dialog is available through many interfaces. This module uses the DialogClassic Web and the DialogLink 5 interface to illustrate DIALINDEX.
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First, we will describe DIALINDEX, including why it is an important search tool. Then we'll review the commands to show how it works, as well as identifying search categories and supercategories. Next, we will conduct a search in DIALINDEX and show you the differences between using DIALINDEX in DialogClassic Web and DialogLink 5. Finally, we'll summarize and suggest other training tools that might be helpful to you.
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Designed to allow you to search multiple database indexes, DIALINDEX (File 411) is a central index for most of the databases on Dialog. In DIALINDEX you can compare the number of records retrieved by your strategy among a group of databases. In File 411 you can search individual files, subject categories, such as medicine or energy, SuperCategories, large groups of subject similar databases only available to search in DIALINDEX, or any combination.
By entering a search query in DIALINDEX, the Dialog system will report how many matching records or ìhitsî are found, and in which databases.
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When you're not sure which database(s) might have the most data on your topic, use DIALINDEX as the first step in your online research.
Using DIALINDEX before conducting a database search you can be certain which databases have relevant content or choose only the database(s) that have the most coverage for your topic. Using DIALINDEX, you can avoid wasted time and costly searching in databases that ultimately prove to contain very few or no records on your topic. You can also scan the Dialog collection when the topic is obscure or does not fit into a well-defined subject area.
Finally, you can refine your search strategy by testing and comparing the number of hits.
Slide 5
It's important to understand what DIALINDEX does and what it does not do. Put simply, you BEGIN in DIALINDEX, choose a group of databases to scan, and then enter a single SELECT command to find out how many records contain your search terms. Because DIALINDEX is an index only, you will not be able to display records while in DIALINDEX. You are also not able to enter search terms in multiple SELECT commands or to combine set numbers. In fact, no sets are formed while in DIALINDEX. When you finish a search in DIALINDEX, you typically BEGIN in the databases that demonstrated the best retrieval, perform the search strategy (refining as needed), and display the records. Now that you know a bit about DIALINDEX, we'll take a look at the commands we use in File 411.
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Dialog organizes its over 600 databases into subject categories to make it easier for you to select the files you want. For example, if you search in the biomedical area, there are categories, for medicine, biosci, biotech and more; in intellectual property there are categories for patents, trademarks, and smaller categories for European patents. There are also supercategories, only searchable in DIALINDEX which search all business files or all science files. And for that needle in the haystack search you can search ALL, which searches most of the databases on Dialog across subjects. You can view or download lists of these subject categories in the Dialog Database Selection Guide, available on the Dialog web site.
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The commands shown here are used in DIALINDEX. You start your search in the DIALINDEX database—File 411—using the begin command as you would to enter any other file. A new command used in DIALINDEX is the set files or SF command. This command specifies the databases you wish to scan. You can enter category acronym(s), that we just reviewed, file numbers or a combination, separated by commas. The databases you select is your file list. Note that you can show all the file banners in your list using the SHOW FILES command. Once you have set your file list, you enter select or s followed by your search terms as you do in searching other databases. The results show you the number of records that contain your search terms in your chosen databases. You must enter a single select statement, since no sets are created in DIALINDEX. Your search, however, can consist of a single term, a multiple-word phrase or any appropriate suffix-coded or prefix-coded terms. You can also ìnestî your terms putting ORed terms in parentheses if you also have the AND operator in your search statement. Then the system scans the databases and selects the files containing your search strategy. Enter the RANK FILES command to sort your file list so that the file with the most hits or number of records is at the top of the list for easy review. RANK FILES displays a ranked list of files and items (numbered N1, N2, etc). You can then begin a OneSearch of up to 60 databases using the N numbers, file numbers or BEGIN HITS to get all files that contain your search terms. A handy shortcut is to enter the command save temp to store your strategy for free on the Dialog system for 7 days. In this way you do not have to re-enter your strategy after you BEGIN selected files, but rather enter EXS to execute the previous strategy you just ran in DIALINDEX in the actual databases. If you have a particularly long strategy, this can save you time. The exs command will create a set of records (S1) of the search strategy you conducted in DIALINDEX. Now you can narrow the search and type out records in the databases you selected.
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Before we conduct a search, we'll look at the DialogClassic Web interface we are using in this module. Logon to DialogClassic Web, at http://www.dialogclassic.com. Then enter your Dialog User ID and password and click the Log in button.
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Once you enter your User ID and password, you will see the screen shown here. At the top of the screen the Retrieve Buffer shows the commands you have executed. At the bottom of the screen is the Type-Ahead buffer, in which you enter your search commands. You can enter your commands one at a time or prior to logging on to Dialog, once you have opened this screen after your initial logon. Note that at the bottom of the Type-Ahead buffer the Status Bar shows you the amount of time you have been connected to Dialog and any commands that have yet to be executed. At the top right side of the screen is the Databases pane. When you BEGIN in a database you will see the name of the database you have selected in the Databases pane. Clicking the link shows the Bluesheet for that database. The session pane contains a list of all commands you enter during your search.
Now let's try an example in DIALINDEX.
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In our example we will use DIALINDEX (File 411) to find databases that contain recent forecasts for the nutraceuticals market. We will BEGIN 411; decide on the databases, in this case Mktres (Market Research files), and follow the command summary listed here to conduct our search. Before we conduct the search, notice two commands that have not been mentioned in this module. When you are searching more than one database, you will want to use the REMOVE DUPLICATES RD command. This eliminates duplicate records before you display your results. After all, you don't want to pay for a record twice. Notice the TYPE command. The TYPE command in this example shows the format as 6,K. This means that records will display the title and a window of 30 words around the keywords in your search strategy. The KWIC or K format is handy for viewing parts of the record before displaying the complete record. Also, notice FROM EACH attached to the end of the command. If you are searching in multiple databases, you may want to see a sampling of records from each database in your list. This example allows you to see one record from each database that contains results.
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To begin our search, we'll type BEGIN or B in the type-ahead buffer followed by the file number 411, the number of the DIALINDEX database. Next, we use the SET FILES or SF command to select the files we plan to try for our search. In this example we are going to scan a group of market research databases using the acronym MKTRES. Note that our file list has 26 files to be searched. We enter our search terms in one SELECT statement and hit the Enter key.
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Our file list displays showing the number of records in the Items column that contain our search terms in each database. Also displayed is the file number and name of each database with hits.
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Next, we can RANK FILES so that the database with the most records is displayed at the top of the list. This makes it easier to see how many records each database contains especially if you have a long list of files. Of the 26 files we had in our original list, 11 databases contain records with our search terms. We have already eliminated having to search 15 databases that would have produced no results. Once you rank the files, N reference numbers display. You can use these N reference numbers to begin in the actual databases or use the file numbers listed in the File column or just begin hits, which selects all databases with at least one record. You may want to check the Bluesheets to gain more information about the databases with hits.
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A command that can save you time is the SAVE TEMP command, which saves your search strategy on the Dialog system for 7 days at no cost. If you have a complicated search strategy, you will find this quite handy. We now select databases from our list in DIALINDEX, in this case, the first four databases with the most records. At this point we are leaving DIALINDEX and actually entering the databases we just selected so we can either modify our search or view some of the records.
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Because we saved our search strategy before leaving DIALINDEX, we can now execute that same strategy in the databases we selected by using the EXS EXECUTE STEPS command. This creates a set S1 of 47 records in the databases we selected. Now that we have a set of records, we can either display some or modify the search. In this case we'll narrow the set to the most recent records, from 2008 and 2009, using the colon between the years for a range. When searching more than one database it is important to remove duplicates RD as there can be overlapping content in various files. Our search results are now 6 unique records.
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To display records we use the TYPE command: T Set number S3/6,k for the format. This format shows the title of the record and a window of 30 words around your keywords. We'll type out ALL the records since there are so few. Note that if you have more records you might want to use the TYPE command with from each appended as I mentioned earlier. Notice that this record compares the bottled water industry against soft drinks. It is a fulltext record with a Word Count of over 5000 words.
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Another popular interface for searching Dialog is the Dialog software DialogLink 5. It can be downloaded from the Dialog Web site for free. In DialogLink 5 a graphical interface to DIALINDEX appears automatically when you type BEGIN 411. Let's review a few screens to show you how this same search would look if you were using DIALINDEX in DialogLink 5. Once you type BEGIN 411 the screen you see here displays. Enter your files in the set files box. We'll enter mktres for market research as we did in our last search. In the Select box we'll enter our search strategy and then click the Run Search button.
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The screen that displays contains a list of all of the files in MKTRES, the number of hits or records, the file number and name. To do rank files, just click the word Hits twice at the top of the Hits column.
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The files are reordered with the database with the most hits at the top of the list. Now we'll check the databases we want to search, in this example, Files 20, 148, 16 and 621 and click the Begin Hits button to execute the search in the databases we just selected.
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The graphical interface now changes to command search Dialog and the search continues just as we saw in the previous example in DialogClassic Web.
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To summarize, here are some tips as you begin using DIALINDEX:
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What are your next steps?
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This completes our demonstration of DIALINDEX. Thank you for your interest in Dialog. Keep checking with us for other At a Glance modules added regularly.