“Term Clusters” in Academic OneFile…”What the Heck?”
I was searching in Academic OneFile and saw “Term Clusters” on the toolbar. I
said to myself “what the heck is that?”. So, I experimented, and played around
with it and I have to say I’m still not sure. But I found it interesting, fun, and I
think it can be useful too. When you click on “Term Clusters” a search box
appears for a term to be entered in. When you put in a term a ring appears
accompanied by articles. The following is given on the database to describe the
ring and accompanying articles.
Term Clusters :
- Inner rings represent popular topics related to the search.
- Outer rings feature topics related to the inner rings.
- Use the arrows to see more focused results.
- Click any term to filter the right-column results. Click an article to view it.
The inner ring’s subtopics are more germane to the topic, and the outer ring
can be described as being subtopics to the subtopics. If you go into the Academic
File and click on “Term Cluster” you’ll see what I’m talking about. The example
given is “Alice Walker”. I put in the term “Great Gatsby” and got a ring
accompanied by 210 articles. Other topics I entered where, “World War I”,
“Korean War”, Berlin Airlift”, “Frank Sinatra”, “F. Scott Fitzgerald”, “James
Thurber”, and the “Great Depression”. I received rings and articles for all of
these topics. Some of the subtopics didn’t apply. For example for “F. Scott
Fitzgerald”, I got “John” for John Fitzgerald Kennedy for one of my subtopics. I
think this is because Fitzgerald is in both names, But, I found that most topics
applied.
Tom