A browsable index is an alphabetical listing of terms used in a specific field of a database. You can browse this list to see, for example, various spellings of author names, what types of publications are covered by a particular database, or the names of journals indexed in a certain database. After finding appropriate terms, you can then submit a search for those terms.
Use the drop-down box to specify which database index to browse. Each database has its own unique author name index. Most databases have a publication type index, and a few databases have a journal name index.
In the search field, enter an author last name or term, or partial spelling of a last name or term, and click the Go button. Twenty terms are displayed in an alphabetical list, with your term or word in the middle. This allows you to see similar spelling variations that may also be of interest:
Navigate through the list of index terms using 'Next' and 'Previous' buttons or jump to another part of the index term list by entering another term in the search field. Mark the check boxes to select terms for searching. Click the ‘Go’ button on the left navigation area to submit a search of index terms, and click either the radio button 'AND' to narrow or 'OR' to broaden.
Click 'Remember Terms' each time you check boxes on a page to keep a list of the terms you want to search,
At this point, you have several options: you can de-select terms if you wish; you can submit your search by clicking on the 'Go' button on the left navigation area, or you can resume browsing by clicking the 'Previous' or 'Next' button.
When searching by an author's surname and initials, please be aware that an author's initials can also be stop words. CSA Illumina stop words include: after, and, before, near, not, or, and within. Search strategies including stop words will retrieve zero results, e.g., au=Robinson, GE. If you need to search for an author whose initials are a stop word, they must be enclosed in "quotes", e.g., au=Robinson, "GE". This problem is most obvious in databases where the authors' initials are run together and not separated by spaces or periods, e.g., Cochrane, MN.