About Metasearch.OpinionArchives.com
Metasearch is a hosted service developed and maintained by OpinionArchives. It allows searching of OpinionArchives journal archives by keyword and/or author. The software is optimized to improve the speed and functionality of simultaneous multi-target search and retrieval.
Metasearch is now, and will continue to be, freely usable for searching selected journal archives. The intent is to show our customers a simple standard way of discovering the broad coverage of content published by some of the oldest continuously published magazines in America. We hope that by locating results using this tool, you will be interested in viewing the entire article content, in its original format as displayed in PDF format.
For cost quotes or additional information on the fee-based service, you may contact Support@OpinionArchives.com or call 617.964.0700 ext 171.
Metasearch features available include:
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Keyword and/or Author searching
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Displaying publisher, date, citation, subject and author (if available)
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Customer authentication at the database level
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Limiting search to publisher, author, or subject areas
The databases of archives searched by Metasearch are in different formats on different servers. This important resource connects to each one and allows basic searching as specified above. If additional searching is required, it must be done at the database level with additional tools and features offered by each server. The fundamental purpose of this service is to alert our customers that there are vast resources that are included in these archives.
The found list of records contain citation information (often from OCR [optical character recognition] article source) so it may contain missing or misread characters from the articles. However, customers will be able to view the original articles for the exact content which was printed.
The articles searched are from the entire archives of each journal. Several of the journals may omit the recent issues, but most journals are current with the print publications.
About OpinionArchives
OpinionArchives has partnered with Publishers to bring you the complete archives of these Journals. In addition, we have partnered with Ebsco to provide a subset of the journals. Finally, Metasearch has been developed using software from Index Data, Care Affiliates and Webfeat.
For more information about OpinionArchives please visit http://www.OpinionArchives.com
About the Database Connectors Used by Metasearch
Metasearch supports Z39.50/SRU in native mode. Any target server that conforms to the Z39.50 or SRU standard protocols are searched using Z39.50/SRU connectors maintained by Index Data. Additional translators are supplied by WebFeat, Inc.
Using the facets
Metasearch comes with a set of facets that can be used to limit the number of search results and so retrieve the most relevant records. The default facets include topical subjects, authors, and the publishers. The facets menu appears during the search in the left panel next to the results list. The terms displayed under each facet are sorted according to the frequency of the term within the search results. When a term is clicked, it appears in the navigation strip (on top of the results list view) and the results are narrows to those records satisfying this additional criterion. A limiting term can be removed from the query at any time by clicking the appropiate entry in the navigation strip.
Advanced search
The advanced view of the search is expanded by clicking on the link next to the search button. Using this form it is possible to specify particular fields (keyword, author, title, etc.) in which to search for the terms, and therefore to return more relevant results. The advanced search interface follows the user's actions, including clicking the facets and the navigation strip, so that the current query is always reflected in the form.
Because there are different archive search engines that respond to Metasearch, they may treat syntax differently. So an exact match will require going directly to each search site. For example, “Cuba Gooding” will return results that contain “Cuba” and “good” in Metasearch. Most archives will support exact match by searching within each archive at the search page for that particular archive. Metasearch keywords will be directed to each archive as the articles “contain” the specified terms.
Navigation strip
The navigation strip presents the current query in a convenient form that allows individual terms to be easily removed from the search (by clicking on them) and new terms to be added (by clicking the facets). If the search is limited to a single publisher’s archive, the navigation strip will contain an appropriate indication.
Sorting
The default sorting in Metasearch is based on the relevance of the search results. This can be changed and the results sorted by date of publication, title or author. The appropriate sorting criterium can be selected from the drop down menu next to the navigation strip.
Resource selection
Depending on the user's privileges a source selection menu item may be available. When clicked, a pop-up layer with a tree of sources, sorted by categories, will appear. Authorized customers will be authenticated when the user clicks on Go To Resource.
In case of problems
If you are experiencing problems with Metasearch, please check that:
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Your browser fullfills the minimum requirements
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Your firewall does not block execution of the scripts required by this site to operate. (In general if you run your firewall at high security settings masterkey.indexdata.com has to be added to the trusted or allowed group of sites.)
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if you are using Internet Explorer 7 with a non-default security level please ensure that the page belongs to the Allowed Sites group
Browser requirements:
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Internet Explorer 6 or greater
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FireFox 2.0 or greater