Scope/Coverage Access Searching Hints Viewing Results Downloading/Printing Results
GEOBASE is a citation/abstract database covering worldwide literature on cultural and scientific aspects of geography. The database goes back to 1980 and presently contains more than one million records. Social science topics include: urban planning, international development, cartography, geographic information systems, demography, geographic education and curriculum and medical geography. Scientific topics include: climatology, energy, environment, geomorphology, hydrology, remote sensing, photogrammetry, sedimentology, geochemistry, geophysics, paleontology, petrology and volcanology. More than 2000 scholarly journals and some 3000 proceedings, papers, reports and book chapters are covered annually. Between 1966-1979 use the print index, Geographical Abstracts in the library (G1 G3313)
Availability: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
On Campus: Through the Internet, connect to the library home page (www.csulb.edu/library), click on ELECTRONIC RESOURCES, then RESEARCH DATABASES then ALPHABETICALLY then select GEOBASE from list.
Off Campus: From home or work, you must access via a proxy server. Remote access requires CSULB authentication and is restricted to students, faculty and staff of CSULB. For help with remote access follow the directions at /library/access.html. Once connected, follow On Campus instructions above.
Basic Search
Type in single word or phrase in the search box. If you want the topic to be an exact phrase, put in quotes "world politics". Search for singular or plural words by placing a plus sign + after the word. Women+ will find women or womens. To find more variants in addition to singular or plural words, truncate with an asterisk *. Searching for geograph* will find geography, or geographers or geographical. Beneath the search box there is the option to select whether you are looking for a "keyword," "title," or "author". You can further LIMIT TO items available in at CSULB. Limit to Full Text does not work in this database. You can RANK your results by date or by relevance (that is the most times your search terms comes up in the citation and the abstract).
Advanced Search (Form Shown Below)
When you open the database the system defaults the ADVANCED SEARCH. At the opening screen to the right of the words SEARCH FOR type in a single word or a phrase "in quotes". Farther to the right you see a box with a down arrow. You can select any number of sub fields to search. But KEYWORD, AUTHOR and TITLE are the best fields to select, the other options may narrow your search down too much.
Search Tip: Truncation is an asterisk * it will search for geog* (geographers, or geography, or geographical). For singular and plural words, use a plus sign + (house+ = "house or houses).
Browsing Index for Synonyms: Browse the indexes before you search to check the spelling or format of your search terms and phrases and maybe find alternative words to search. To access, click the Browse Index
icon.
Limiting: Selecting the search boxes below can a LIMIT TO a broad SUBJECT CATEGORY. You can select one of 8 broad fields of geography: Ecology, Geology, Geomechanics, Human Geography, International Development, Oceanography or Physical Geography. You can also limit to DOCUMENT TYPE: Book or Journal. There is also the option to limit to a CONTENT TYPE: Article, Editorial, Book, Note, Review or Survey.
CSULB Availibility: Can be determined if you check the box that reads: Items In My Library
Don't click on Full Text limiter. This is not active for this database and you will get no results.
Expert Search. This is a free form search which can be undertaken but the effort is greater than the results. Click on Expert Search and view instructions at bottom of screen.
For More Help, Click on Question Mark at top of search form.
List Of Records is the result of your search. It repeats your search strategy, tells you how many records were found matching your search and lists the full bibliographic information for each item. Click on the hyperlinked titles in blue to see the full record.
Detailed Record includes additional information about the item, and includes an abstract if available.
DOWNLOADING, PRINTING, E-MAILING
Printing Results
Click on the print button. This will format the record to remove frames and make the article print-ready. Follow your browsers or the library's directions for printing.
Emailing Results:
EXITING
Click Exit in extreme lower right corner of search screen to close service, a blue bar at the bottom of screen.
Content maintained by Greg Armento
