Description:

ABI/INFORM has abstracts from and the full text 
to over 1500 academic journals in the areas of: 
marketing, management, and business from 
1971-present.  This is a global database and 
also covers information on human resources, 
economics, computers, taxation, and over 
60,000 companies.  Although it is primarily
business-oriented, this database is useful for
a variety of diciplines.  

Access:

On Campus

Go to the Libraries' home page at 
http://www.lib.lsu.edu and click on 
Indexes and Databases. At the top of the list
on the left hand side is a link to ABI/INFORM.

Off Campus

Follow the directions for on campus, but Click
on "Connect from Off Campus." Enter in the 17
digits of your campus ID number and your
PIN, which is changeme until you change it.

General Search Techniques

The "Search Methods" icon allows you to 
choose a search level from either: basic,
advanced or guided.   The "Browse" List Icon
allows you to search an alphabetized list of
general subjects, companies, or locations,
and places.

For a Basic Search

Enter the topic or keywords into the provided
search box.  Choose a date range from either:
Current 1999-present, Backfile 1986-1998, and 
Deep Backfile Prior to 1986. Next, choose 
how you would like the article results to be
shown: full text, total articles, or peer
reviewed articles.

For More Advanced Searches

You have the same selections as the basic
search menu with the additional option
of truncation, which uses the "?" mark
for right handed use of truncation.
It will find all forms of the word,
for example: psycholog? would find:
psychology, psychologist, psychological.
Use "*" to replace a single character
inside the word or at the right end
of the word. An example being:
Gr*y: Gray or Grey.
Other ways to limit your search are
using the Thesaurus, Classification
Codes, Stop Words, Operators, Article
Types, or Other Search Fields.

A Guided Search

A guided search provides a nice 
combination of advanced searching
and basic searching techniques.  Insert
topic or keyword in search box, choose
field, utilize Boolean operators (if needed)
and click on search.

Results

In the results section, the screen show 
small text boxes which are summary(article/
citation)abstracts, the camera and text box
icons show text with graphics, and the camera
shows Adobe acrobat text.
Click on the text box or underlined text 
to view article.  Save, Print, or Email options
are availabe in the top left hand corner at the
top of the screen.

In order to view the scanned articles, you must
have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on you
computer. 

If you have any questions about this database,
please email me or call me directly.

Sigrid Kelsey
8-2720

*This E-struction message was written by April
Davis, a graduate student in the School of Library
and Information Science*
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