Since 1938, this database has collected, organized, and distributed information in more than 160 countries. First, it only included English resources, and then abstracts, periodicals, and publications were added to the website. The Proquest Database is the product of Bell & Howell Education and Information Company, which is a global guide to meeting the information needs of millions of researchers at all levels and any ability rate.

The main subjects of the ProQuest Database include:

Medical sciences, health services, pharmacy, and dentistry

Health care, pediatrics, pharmacy, physiotherapy, international communication

Public science, trade in Asia, trade in Europe, computer sciences, sports industry, and entertainment

Engineering and technology, information technology, computer sciences, electricity and telecommunications

Management, accounting, tax, business, and related topics

Social sciences, psychology, and educational sciences, religious publications

Applied sciences, banking, techniques and innovation

Research publications, educational journals, public references, and library research

ProQuest Resource Types

The database provides access to millions of documents from hundreds of different resources. These old and new documents include sources such as newspapers and theses and PhD dissertations. In fact, ProQuest is the official digital archive of congressional library dissertations, scientific publications, presentations, reports and official research, government documents, books, maps, reports, summaries of congresses, standards, and audio and video sources.

Documents saved in this database are in the forms of PDFs, figures, diagrams, Microsoft office files, newspapers, journals, articles of scientific and commercial journals, and audio and visual files.

Depending on user access, these documents can be in the form of abstracts and full texts. In addition, the documents can be in the form of figures, diagrams, tables, and movies.

Features:

·         Possibility of searching for documents by different methods

·         Updating information

·         Thesis presentation; in this regard, several new dissertations are added every year

·         Presenting the abstracts of articles in different languages, including French, Arabic, and Chinese

·         Presenting bibliographic specifications of articles with their abstracts and full texts

·         Having the archives of several important newspapers, including The New York Times and Washington Post

·         Possibility of membership in the database and using its advantages (connection in any place and at any time or outside the university

·         Personalization and management of search results)

·         Having access to the ProQuest database

We can have access to the database in three ways:

By following the access link through entering the website of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences (www.kums.ac.ir), clicking the link of digital library from the top toolbar of the page, and selecting ProQuest Database from the list of accessible databases of the university

Entering the website of the electronic library with the address of http://diglib.kums.ac.ir and selecting the database

Direct visit of the database with the address of http://search.proquest.com

Basic Search

To use the database, click the search box on the homepage of the database or click its link at the top left of the page and enter your desired keyword. In addition, you can determine whether you want to see the full text or the peer-reviewed contents. The text autocomplete can also be used along with typing the keyword. In order to benefit from all features of the website, you can first register on the website and carry out your search. For example, you can enter “optic neve” and place the term in quotation marks so that it could be regarded as one phrase, which optimizes the search results. After that, you can click the search option.

Advanced Search

By selecting an advanced option on top of the page, five different search methods are shown, which can be used based on your need, and all of them are the subcategories of advanced search. You can use the advanced search link at the top of the basic search box or in the advanced section at the top of the page.

Advanced search: this search has flexible fields for more complex searches.

In advanced search method, there are some boxes for entering different keywords and a combination of terms with the application of different operators. In this regard, more boxes can be created as desired.

In the figure above, various numbered search options are shown, each of which is pointed out below:

1. In “limit to” section, you can only search the records that provide access to the full text. By selecting peer reviewed option, you can search the judged scientific contents.

2. Search can be limited in terms of the time limit.

Advanced Search Method

Searching the name of the author

Saving the name of institution or university

(Searching subject heading) Selected Topics

Searching the advisor of the thesis

(Searching keyword), this search is performed among the keywords that are indexed in this database

Determines the type of degree

Type of degree (MSc or PhD)

Determines the document language

It can be determined that the article or other studies searched are performed on which age group

Determines the display order of the search results

Determines the number of documents in each pay of search results display

Because of the possibility of repetitive documents on the search results display among the various ProQuest databases, this section can be used to specify the repetitive results.

Search in Publications

To view this section, click “Publications” at the top of the page. This section contains an alphabetical list of titles of various publications of books and journals available in ProQuest.

There are also options on the right of the page to limit the publication list

Search in the Alphabetical List of Specific Content (Browse)

To observe this section, click “browse” at the top of the page. This section includes two main parts of dissertations & thesis, and health & medicine, the subcategories of each are shown in the figure below.

You can browse titles by selecting this section, which contains videos and other nursing educational resources.

To observe the dissertation resources and browse the references, click “dissertations and theses” in the browse section. Theses are arranged in this section in two forms: in alphabetic order of titles and alphabetic order of countries

If you only want to search in the section of theses references, you can click “health & medicine” on the homepage of the database and then click “ProQuest global dissertations and theses”. Now, you can search your keyword and find the relevant theses.

Attention: on any page of the database, click the sign of ProQuest from the top left side of the page to return to the homepage.