Searching

Quick search

Quick search finds titles, authors, keywords, book abstracts and chapter abstracts. Quick search will find most of what you need, and you can use wildcards. 

 

 

The Quick search box is on every page. It works just like other search engines, like Google search:

  • Put in a word to find just that word (and simple variants: search for cat and you will also find cats.)
  • Put in more than one word and you will find pages that contain any of those words (the ones that contain most of them should be the top results).
  • Put in a phrase (enclose the phrase in quotation marks: “just like this”) and you will find only pages containing that phrase.
  • Run your search by hitting return or clicking the magnifying glass icon to the right of the search box.

 

Search results

The main part of the search results page contains your search results, divided into two parts, each on its own tab:

  • The books tab shows you what complete Oxford Medicine Online books you have found with your search – for example, if you searched for its title, or a search term that was appropriate to the whole book; and
  • The chapter tab shows you what chapters you have found with your search – for example if you searched for a word that appears in the full text of that chapter, or in the indexing data for that chapter. The CHAPTER tab is the default.

 

 

Click on either tab to see your chapter and books search results list.

The list is ordered by relevance, with the best results at the top. Use the Sort by options at the top of the list to sort by the author name or publication date instead.

You can choose to increase the number of Items per page with the box at the top of the list.

Long lists will be broken over several pages. Use the Page links at the top right of the list to move from page to page.

 

Each result on the CHAPTER tab shows you the chapter, the book it comes from, and a snippet of text showing how your search term appears – this can help you choose whether you want to see the whole result. Click on the chapter name to see the full text of the chapter, or click on the title to go to that book.

Once you've gone to full content, you can return to your results list, or move through it, using the arrows and Back to results on the left below the header.

 

 

Back to top

  

Refining your results list and choosing your search area

On the left of your results list you’ll find features to help you find what you want in that list.

Narrow your choices by using the left pane available on all search and browse results pages. 

  • Add another search term: To refine your results further, select what type of content you want to search (i.e., full text, bibliography, author), and add a quick search term. Add a row by clicking the “Add row” button, and utilize the Boolean operators as needed between search terms i.e. choosing 'and', 'or' or 'not'. Click the update button for search results reflecting your new search criteria. To delete all or part of your query, simply delete the search terms and select “Update.”
  • Availability: your library may not have subscribed to all the Oxford Medicine Online content. Open the Availability widget by clicking the little triangle and then check the Show full text results only box to limit what you see to just what you have access rights to.
  • By most recently published, specialty, career stage, series, and date. In this pane you’ll see the same specialty taxonomy as in the specialty browse panel – but in more detail, so you can choose to explore more precisely.
  • Each topic shows you the number of books on that topic (in brackets).
  • Click on the + signs to expand each branch of the taxonomy or the – signs to hide the sub-branches. Click on each term to choose it.
  • Refine by date: If you are looking for a title published online or in print in a certain year or range of years, use this tool to find it. Select “Online Pub Date” or “Print Pub Date”, then add a range of years using the “From” and “To” fields. If you know the exact year it was published, select it in the “Exact year” dropdown. Hit the “Update” button to see the updated results list. You can also add rows and use Boolean operators as part of this functionality.

 

 

More on search areas

Click on the Refine terms box and make your choice from the list.

 

Full text is the entire text of all the books in Oxford Medicine Online. It includes book titles, abstracts, chapter titles, ISBN, keywords, etc. This is the broadest possible search.

You can also do a full text search of:

  • Headings
  • Indexes
  • Bibliographies
  • Tables
  • Captions

 

Abstract confines your search to the abstracts of books and chapters.

Chapter Title restricts your search to the titles of chapters.

Book Title searches the titles of books only.

Author searches author names.

Editor searches editor names.

DOI searches digital object identifiers.

ISBN searches International Standard Book Numbers.

 

Back to top 

Changing how much information is displayed

There are three options for viewing results. To select one, click on it.

 Minimal detail: title of the book, its author, and publication date.

 Medium detail: title, author, publication details, and the first few lines of the abstract.

 Maximum detail: title, author, publication details, and the complete abstract.

 

You do not need to be precise about the exact form of a term

A Quick search looks for other forms of your term including compounds and plurals:

For example

  • world finds worlds, world-famous, world-soul
  • persecute finds persecuted, persecution, persecutions

If you are not sure whether a search term appears as one word or two

You can search for both version of the word at once by using a search term such as:

  • "web site" website 

Common words are ignored in a search

You may include common words like the, and, of, or, on, etc. in your search term, but you do not need to. These are ignored in a search.

 

Back to top

 

What is a wildcard?

A wildcard is a character which stands for any letter. You can include wildcards in a Quick search or once you have refined your search to make it more flexible.

Two wildcards are available:

  • The question mark ? represents the occurrence of any one single character
  • The asterisk * represents the occurrence of any number of characters (or no character at all)

 

A search with a wildcard retrieves all results which contain matching terms. For example

  • c?t finds cat, cot, cut
  • c*t finds cat, caught, commencement, conflict, consent, cot, cut, etc.

Using wildcards in a search

Wildcards are useful if you do not know how to spell a word or if you are not sure in what form the term you want might appear.

  • The search term *sychok?n?s?s finds psychokinesis
  • The term colo*r matches color and colour
  • The term chorograph* finds chorographer, chorographic, chorographical, chorographically 

 

Back to top