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Guided search

Guided search is a more powerful way of searching for records in FSTA Direct. A number of commonly used fields are available for targeted searches, and online indexes help the user select exact author names, keywords, and sources.

Navigation to Guided search: If Guided search is set as your default search screen (see Preferences) then this is the search screen you arrive at by default after logging in. You can select Guided search from another search screen by clicking on the Guided search tab at the top of the screen.

There are four fields or groups of fields that can be used for searching in Guided search

Any number of these groups can be used to construct a search; if more than one group is used they will be combined using AND logic. Use the Customize button to change the choice of logic operator or to set precedence with brackets.

Free text
Free text searches can be specified to use the All Fields, Article Title, or Abstract fields by selecting the appropriate radio button. Search terms can be entered in the same way as in Easy search, and Boolean logic operators and parentheses can be used to help refine searches. As with Easy search, the prefix (*) and word-stem (~) wild cards can be used.

Examples

To search for the phrase 'wheat beer' in article titles
- Select the Article title radio button in the Free Text panel
- Enter "wheat beer" in the search box
- Click on the Search button

To search for the word 'guacamole' in the abstract field
- Select the Abstract radio button in the Free Text panel
- Enter guacamole in the search box
- Click on the Search button

To search for word 'functional' in all fields
- Select the All fields radio button in the Free Text panel
- Enter functional in the search box
- Click on the Search button

Parentheses (i.e. curved brackets, () ) can be used to make queries more precise and to define the sequence in which the components of a search are interpreted. For example, to search for records that have the word 'bread' present with either 'butter' or 'cheese', the search can be typed as bread AND (butter OR cheese). Nesting of brackets is not supported in Guided search.

Guided free text search supports prefix and word-stemming wild-card searches.

For prefix wild-card searches use *
Example: choc*Searches for records containing words that start with the prefix 'choc' , e.g. chocolate, chocs, chocolates, etc.

For word-stemming wild-card searches use ~
Example: dry~
Searches for records containing grammatical variations of dry, e.g. dry, dried, dries, drying

Greek symbols can be added by clicking the 'Greek symbols' button, selecting the appropriate letter, and pressing OK. Alternatively the textual equivalent can be entered directly in the search box: for example, <beta> is entered (note use of angled brackets) for the Greek letter, beta.

If you need to re-enter or change a search in this field, click on Clear.

Noise words: please see the article in the Appendix on reference topics.

Author
Author searches can be specified by selecting author names using the Author selector.

Click on the Authors button
The Author selector window appears
Start typing the author's name, and a list of candidate names appears in the main pane
Click on the desired author's name when it appears
The name is added to the query in the Guided search window and the Author selector window closes

The process can be repeated for more author names, which are combined in the search using the AND logic operator.

If you need to re-enter or change a search in this field, click on Clear.

Keywords
All records in FSTA are indexed with keywords from the FSTA Thesaurus, a controlled vocabulary of over 10,000 terms organized in a hierarchical structure that describe the main concepts of food science, food technology, and food-based nutrition.

Keyword searches can be specified by selecting keywords using the Keyword selector.

Click on the Keywords button
The Keyword selector window appears
Either click on a letter or enter all or part of a keyword in the top panel and press enter
Select a keyword from the list
Click on Add to add the selected keyword to the search
The name is added to the query in the Guided search window and the Keyword selector window closes

The process can be repeated for more keywords, which are combined in the search using the AND logic operator.

If you need to re-enter or change a search in this field, click on Clear.

For more on Keyword selector functionality see here.

For more information about keywords, see this article.

Source
Source searches enable records to be found from specific journals, patent offices, or other sources. Sources can be specified by selecting sources using the Source selector.

Click on the Sources button
The Source selector window appears
Start typing the source name, and a list of candidate names appears in the main pane
Click on the desired name when it appears
The name is added to the query in the Guided search window and the Source selector window closes

The process can be repeated for more source names, which are combined in the search using the OR logic operator.

If you need to re-enter or change a search in this field, click on Clear.

Click on the Customize button if you wish to change details in your search. This takes you to the edit box on the Advanced search screen where you can edit the search - changing logic or applying brackets to specify precedence (the order in which you wish the components of the search to be interpreted).

The Reset button clears all the fields on this screen, enabling a new search to be entered.

On the right-hand side of the screen there are some panels that contain information and facilitate more searching:

Please click on the links above to learn more about these panels.