Searchable Fields

Thesaurus

The ProQuest Thesaurus is used to index the Criminal Justice Database subject field. Subject terms are found in the subject field and this field is part of the searchable fields table to the right. Subject terms are also commonly known as descriptors, controlled vocabulary, and sometimes classification terms.

In the Criminal Justice Database, there are different subject types and in addition to the all encompassing subject field, there is also a separate subject field for company/organization, person, and location. These are also included in the searchable fields table to the right.

The thesaurus allows you to find subject terms to narrow or broaden your search and is available from the Advanced and Command Line options. If you want to run a search on a subject, but you do not know what term to use, use the thesaurus to search the controlled vocabulary. A hierarchical display is available and will give suggestions on the appropriate subject terms to add to your search.

Look Ups and Browsable Indexes

The Criminal Justice Database offers six Look ups or browsable indexes, so you can easily find spelling or format variations of, for example, an author's name or a journal title. You can find the Look up links in the advanced search page and they are available for the following searchable fields: author, publication, subject heading, person, location and company/organization, . For a description of these fields, please see the searchable fields table to the right.

Note: Look ups are also available from the Command Line search (through the Look up terms link).

To use and locate a Look up or browsable index, select the field from the advanced search pull-down menu. If a Look up is available, under the search row you will see a link to the Look up.

Field Name	Label	Search Examples & Explanation
Abstract	AB	AB(community policing) We use the journal-provided abstract with little or no modification, or have members from our editorial team write an abstract from scratch, drawing on the article’s text and concepts. Our team’s goal is to make the article’s point as clearly and succinctly as possible.
Anywhere	(default)	drug busts OR "drug busts" Enter keyword(s) without a field code label to search the entire record--including the text of FT articles. Quotation marks will immediately help narrow results to those exact two terms.
Anywhere except full text	ALL	ALL(dogs) Searches for keywords in the citation and abstract. Will reveal results on service dogs, hero dogs, etc.
Author	AU	AU(Hoover, John) or using the Author Lookup AU("Hoover, John H.") Use to find documents written by a particular author. Try searching on both the full first name and initials in order to retrieve all publications by a specific author. There is a Look up feature for this field.
Caption	CAP	CAP(photo) to reveal photos in the collection or CAP(shotgun) to reveal any time the word "shotgun" is used in a caption.
Cited Author	CAU	AU(Liederbach) Use to search for an author that is part of the Cited References section of a record.
Cited Document Title	CTI	CTI("dating violence") Use to search for document titles that are part of the Cited References section of a record. Use quotation marks to immediately narrow.
Cited Publication Date	CYR	CYR(October 1987) Use to search for publication dates that are part of the Cited References section of a record.
Cited Publication Title	CPUB	CPUB(Journal of Interpersonal Violence) Use to search for a publication title that is part of the Cited References section of a record.
Company/Organization	ORG	ORG(ACLU) Search for a company or other organizations featured prominently in an article. There is also a Look up feature for this field.
Document Title	TI	TI(black lives matter) Locates the occurrence of search words in the title of the article.
ISSN	ISSN	ISSN (01419870)
Location	LOC	LOC(Michigan) Search for a specific geographic area or location.
Person	PER	PER(Simpson OJ) Use to find articles about a person. There is a Look up feature available for this field
Publication Title	PUB	PUB(Department of Justice Documents) Use to search by a specific publication or publications.
Reference	REF	REF(couriers) Use the reference search field to look for the data in a cited reference. It will search all of the main components of a cited reference (cited author, cited document title, cited publication date, and cited publication title).
Subjects (All & Indexing)	SU	SU(prison) Use the subject search field to look for articles about a specific subject. A search for the subject heading “prison” will find articles with the subject prisons, prison administration and correction personnel among others. These additional subjects or sub-subjects can be seen in the facets on the left of the results page. There is also a Look up feature for this field.