Scientific American



The Scientific American database contains the entire editorial contents of Scientific American from January 1993 through the present. Articles are in PDF format, which maintains the integrity of the printed page with all the graphics. The archive is kept up to date with the current issue available on newsstands.



If the article you need is older than 1993, you can find these issues in the following locations in the Mercersburg Academy library:

• 1991-1993 available in microfiche
  
• 1948-1990 available in microfilm

Search Tips

Article Text Search
Advanced Search Page
Operators and Modifiers (to narrow search even further)
Search Results & Portfolios
Problems & Help

There are numerous ways to search the Scientific American Archives. The method you use should depend on the type of information you would like to glean from the results.

Article Text Search

Found on both the homepage for the Scientific American Archives and on the Advanced Search Page, this is the most general way to search for a topic. You need only to enter the subject desired (e.g. harvest) and the archives will search the text of every article for the chosen word(s). Your results will have your search term(s) somewhere within the text of the article. The search not only looks for your search words, but all stemmed variations (e.g. harvesting, harvested, etc.)

If you would like to search more than one subject, you may utilize Boolean searching, using the words (AND or OR) between search terms (e.g. rainforest and medicine).

AND – using “AND” between search terms tells the computer to only return articles that have both search terms in the text.

OR – using “OR” between search terms allows the computer to return items that have one word or the other, or both.

Advanced Search Page

• Article Title Search: If you remember that an article has a certain word(s) in the title, use this search. Remember though that the computer will only search the title of the article for your designated topic.
• Author Search: Use this search if you are trying to accumulate a series of works by a particular author. You may only search by the author’s last name.
• Date Published Search: This specific search allows you to find an article published in a specific month of a particular year. This will be particularly helpful if you remember the date of the issue where you saw an article, even if you do not remember the title or the author.

Operators and modifiers

Operators and modifiers allow you to make very specific searches. You must put the modifier/operator in brackets, as in the examples below:

• To prevent the computer from returning searches that include variations on the word entered, put it in quotation marks:

       E.g. “mountain” –the search will find only articles with the specific word “mountain” and disregard all other articles, even if they contain modifications to the word “mountain”, like mountains, mountainous, mount, etc.

• <NEAR> modifier: Use of this modifier searches for words within proximity of one another in the document. The closer that the words are together makes the relevance rating higher. You also may control how near the words are together in this manner:

       E.g. greenhouse <NEAR/1> effect – the word greenhouse must be within one word of effect in the text of the document – “greenhouse effect”.

• <NOT> modifier: Employing this modifier, accompanied with the word “and” will narrow your search by un-including a word that may otherwise go hand-in-hand with your search word.

       E.g. cancer and diagnosis and <NOT> chemotherapy - returns results that do not necessarily focus on chemotherapy treatment for cancer, but may discuss anything about the diagnosis and non-chemo based therapy.

• <CASE> modifier: Using this modifier before a search term makes that word case-sensitive.

       E.g. <CASE> Apple – the search will find only articles where the word appears in this manner. No articles with “apple” or “APPLE” will be returned.

Search Results

Once you get a page of results, the results will be chronological order with the most recent articles first.

You may choose to either download the articles or view them on the spot. If you would like to save a few for more convenient viewing, you may save them to your folder. You may choose to save your files through your session, or keep them for a longer period of time by creating an account with the database (very easy, follow the steps). You may print, download, or view the articles in your portfolio. If you leave the Scientific American site, and return, your saved articles in your portfolio will be lost, unless you have logged in and created an account.

Problems & Help:

If you run into problems using the Scientific American site, please access their help page. If you are still having problems, please ask a librarian. Have fun!