The Ohio State University

Guide to Information Resources in Education:
Hints for Advanced Searchers

Automatic Journal Alerts and Saving Searches in the OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center

By completing a simple online registration form you can gain access to a special version of the OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center (EJC), the source of much of the online full text available through OSU's electronic databases.  Once you have registered, you'll be able to save your search histories for later use and receive automatic e-mail notification about articles from particular journals or on particular topics.

After registering, you should choose "My Login" from the toolbar at the top of the EJC home page.  Enter your login and password.

1. Select a journal title within a subject of interest.
   Click on "New Issue Alerts: Add This Journal", then fill in the resulting form.  You'll receive e-mail notification when new issues become available online.
2. Alternatively, conduct a topic search.
   Click on "Save Search", then fill in the resulting form.  You'll receive e-mail notification of similar articles as they become available online.
3. You also can re-use that search another time.

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New ERIC Document Alerts and Saving Searches in Other OhioLINK Databases

A selected list of OhioLINK databases you might want to try this with include:

• Education Abstracts
• ERIC
• PsycINFO
• Sociological Abstracts

1. After you have created a search that you wish to reuse, click on "Save Search Strategy" in the navy blue right margin.
2. Mark the radio button named "Permanent Save". (Otherwise, your search will be saved for three hours on the OhioLINK server.)
3. Click the grey "Save Search Strategy" button. (Be sure to read the "Tips and Hints" first.)
4. Save the file to a disk or to your desktop, being sure to give it a distinctive name.
5. The next time you connect to the database, click on "Run Saved Search" in the navy blue right margin.
6. Browse for and select the correct search from your disk or desktop, then click on the grey "Upload and Execute Search" button.
7. For the latest ERIC documents (EDs), click "Limit search results" after executing your search.  Select "Latest Update" and "ERIC documents", then click the "Limit Results Now" button.

Note: No automatic alert system exists for these databases yet.

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Automatic Journal Alerts and Saving Searches in EBSCO Databases

The EBSCO databases you'll most likely be using for research in education are:

• Academic Search Premier
• Professional Development Collection
• Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection

Hint: After entering one database, click on the "Choose Database" tab at the top of the screen.  Then you can mark the boxes beside the names of all three databases in order to search all three at once.

1. After you have created a search that you wish to reuse, click on the "Search History" tab, then on "Save History".
2. You'll be asked to create a personal login and password for use with the EBSCO databases.
3. Once you've logged in personally, you can save your search temporarily, permanently, or ask to have the search automatically re-run periodically to "alert" you of new articles on your topic.
4. The next time you enter an EBSCO database, click on the "Search History" tab, then on "Retrieve History." After logging in with your personal login and password, you'll be presented with a list of your saved searches from which you can select one to re-run.

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