However, all Abstracts are on Disc 1, so one can search for key phrases across all the abstracts. Insert the Start Disc (Disc 1) into your CD-ROM drive, select "Search Abstracts (Disc 1–4) & Articles (Disc 1)" or click on the search icon on the tool bar (binoculars with a page of text). Put the word "Abstract" in the title field. Put key words in the text box.

The phrase "confirmatory factor analysis" found 21, while the phrase "factor analysis and confirmatory" found 34.

Putting "factor analysis" in the keywords field found 106 entries.

Put the university of institution name in the text box—or the unique part of the name. Put the word "abstract" in the Title field. You might limit your search by also adding a topic.

Putting "Chicago and Rasch" in the text box and "Abstract" in the title field found 3 articles by various combinations of Geoff Masters, Benjamin Wright, and Howard Wainer.

Use "Browse By Author"

Note that "Browse by Author" is a large single text file. You can click on a letter of the alphabet, and "jump" to the first page of names beginning with that letter. This speeds things up, if you are looking for someone who's name is near the beginning of the section for a chosen letter, but if you are looking for someone at the end of a section, it is quicker to start with the next letter and page-up.

Also, since "Browse by Author" is a single text file, you can use the find command for the last name. However, it is a big file, and using the find command in a large file can be very slow. So jump to the first letter of the name, and then use the find (CTRL-f) for the last name or a unique first name.

Searching Instead of Browsing

If you know the approximate date of an article, using the search command with the author name in the author field on the correct disc, is usually the fastest.

If you don't know date range, start with Disc 1 (Start Disc). Search with the author's name in the author field; or put the author's name in the text box, and the word "Abstract" in the title field. This should be fast, but you may need to exit and put in the correct disc to read the article.

Remember, when searching for names, use a "*" or "?" rather than accented characters.

Searching for a Review of a Specific Book

First, note what year a book was published. Realizing that reviews are frequently published a year or more after a book's initial publication date, select the disc that would most likely contain a review of the book in question. Then open the "start.pdf" file for that particular disc. Click on Browse Table of Contents.

Use the find command (CTRL+f, not the search command) for either the entire title or a unique key phrase of the title. If the OCR performed on the PDF file was successful, you should be able to find the review. Using book author names will also work, but it will also yield articles written by the book's author(s) as well as the book review you are seeking; but repeating the find command is fairly quick, and you might find something else of interest along the way to your destination.

Use caution when using the find command with names. (i) Middle initials are not used consistently. (ii) The "*" or "?" character needs to be used as a substitution for accented characters. (iii) Initials may have been used in place of first names.

However, a book like Davison's Multidimensional Scaling is a bit harder to find, since "multidimensional scaling" is hardly unique, but a find command for "davison" works.

Finding the review of Correspondence Analysis in the Social Sciences by Greenacre and Blasius by entering the title or "Blasius" will get directly to the review. A find command for "Greenacre" will stop for a few other articles and reviews before finding the review.

Pick a set of years to search (i.e., select a disc), and open the "start.pdf" file. Open the Browse Table of Contents. Do a find (Ctrl-f, not a search command) for "book review" or "review". This should stop at each book review or set of book reviews, in date order.

Note: Beginning about 1958, book reviews were organized together in a labeled section. In the early years instead of a section called book reviews, the words "a review" was in the title of reviews; although the exact format varies.