April 22, 2014

Some of you may have noticed a new tool in the Gale InfoTrac products. Term clusters, or visual search results, organize results based on frequently recurring terms and allow users to discover hidden connections. Term clusters can be used to expand or narrow a topic, identify new topics of interest, guide research structure, and more.

After doing a search in PowerSearch, InfoTrac Student, InfoTrac Junior, InfoTrac Newsstand, and other InfoTrac databases, you will see “Term Clusters” under “Analyze” in the column on the left. Click on that to see a visual representation of related topics. Or, start a search by first clicking on “Term Clusters” in the orange toolbar at the top of the database page. For an example, see the attachment.   

To learn more about how to use term clusters and for a complete list of which Gale databases include the tool, refer to this tip sheet. The help section of the InfoTrac databases, under “Ways You Can Search,” also offers an explanation.

Please let students and educators know.

Thanks,
Jen

Jennifer Maurer
School Library Consultant
Oregon State Library