Project Muse

Contents

1. Getting Started
2. Searching
3. Printing and Emailing an Article

1. Getting Started

Project Muse is a full text database of scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences and mathematics.

In the Shatford Library (PCC) select Databases by Name, scroll down and select Project Muse.

From home, go to the library Web page www.pasadena.edu/library/

Select Databases by Name, scroll down and select Project Muse.  You will be asked to log in using your Network ID and Password (PIN).  See Off Campus Access Information for additional help.

[Top of Page]

2. Searching

a.  Click on "Search" b.  Type subject words in the "Search for:" box. Search tips:   All search words are automatically combined, so you don't need to type "AND".  Type "OR" for similar words.  Example: mayan OR mayas.    Use quotation marks  " " to search for phrases - words together in exact order.  Example: "Latin America"	Basic Search
c.  Revising a search If results are not relevant, click "Modify Search" to change your search words.  If you get too many results : try adding more words to your search in the box "Search Within Results" try changing to "All Fields (except text)", to search in titles, authors and subject headings but not the text of articles.	Check to see if it is an article or a book review.  Project Muse includes many book reviews which are generally not useful for assignments.  Be sure to notice if the word "Review" or "Article" appears next to the article information. REMEMBER TO: Look at the Subjects and read the abstract (summary) to see what the article is about.

Truncation:  

Searching is on exact words.   Truncate with an asterisk (*) at the ends of words only.
Examples:

Weimar, K*  to retrieve  Weimar, Klaus
modern* to retrieve modern, modernity, modernism, etc.
histor* to retrieve history, historical, etc.
cat* to retrieve cat and cats, etc.

(The database currently does not offer a mechanism to expand search terms within or at the beginning of words.)

Hyphens and Punctuation:

In general, do not type punctuation or characters (including ampersands) in your search:  punctuation and special charaters are ignored by the search engine and treated as spaces.  However, when punctuation or characters appear as parts of words (e.g., hyphenated names or initials), enter the punctuation or character or leave a space and enclose in quotes.

• Z39.50 or "Z39 50" will retrieve Z39.50
• high/low or "high low" will retreive high/low
• Reid-Pharr or "Reid Pharr" will retrieve Reid-Pharr

[Top of Page]

3. Printing and Emailing an article

Click on the article's title to read the full text.  To print the article, use the print feature on the Web browser for articles in html format and use the print button on the Adobe Acrobat Reader for articles in pdf format.

Project Muse allows for e-mailing citations only, not the full text of the articles.  If you want to e-mail the full text, highlight and copy the text into a Word document and then e-mail it.

 

[Top of Page]