Getting Started

System Requirements

Browser: Internet Explorer 6, Netscape Navigator 7, or Firefox 1.5.

Browser Settings: JavaScript and cookies enabled.

Hardware: Monitor resolution set at 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 with hi-color/16-bit color or equivalent and 56K modem.

Plug-in: You will need Acrobat Reader 4 or higher. For the Skills Center, you will need Flash 8 or higher.

For Further Assistance

If you require further assistance, remember that technical support is free with all ABC-CLIO electronic products. Please call or email us at:

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Navigating Content

Top-Level Navigation

A set of common navigational links appears at the top of every page. They include Home, Decades, Index, Browse, Title List, Skills Center, Blog, About, and Help, as this image demonstrates:

Home: Takes you to the main page of Pop Culture Universe from any page in the site.

Decades: Takes you to PCU’s Decades Pages, which are one-stop guides to the icons, idols, and ideas of each decade from the 1920s to the present. The Decades Pages provide helpful overviews to each decade as well as ready reference lists of the major films, movie stars, TV shows, songs, books, Broadway shows, awards, fads, new products, discoveries and inventions, new words and phrases, fashion trends, sports champions and award winners, and obituaries for each year within the decade.

Index: An ideal tool for any user as well as librarians looking for direct access to the full list of thousands of index terms for the content in the database. See the “Browsing” section for more information.

Browse: Here’s where you start with a broad research idea or topic, and, with a few clicks, narrow your focus by subject, time period, person, or place. See the “Browsing” section for more information.

Title List: A complete list of the 300 book volumes that form the core of the PCU database. You can sort the list by subject, title, or year of release.

Skills Center: Takes you to a separate site (in a new window) that contains tools that can be used both inside and outside of the classroom and library to improve basic research and writing skills for students. These tools include 25 lesson plans, Greenwood Research Tutors that guide students through basic research tasks and concepts, and Greenwood Wizards that walk students step by step through common research and writing assignment. See the Skills Center Help section form more information.

Blog: Also a separate site, the PCUBlog is the place to go for fresh commentary, comments, and opinion on the pop culture of yesterday and today (mostly today). A stable of Greenwood editors, authors, and students will address the hot topics of the day, which will then connect back to material in PCU that provides context to the pop culture phenomena of today, promoting learning in a fun and engaging way.

About: General information about Pop Culture Universe.

Help: That’s the section you are in now.

Quick Search, Advanced Search, and Subject Browse

The Quick Search box and Advanced Search link appear at the top center of every page on the site. On the left side of the Home Page is the Subject Browse.

Quick Search: Allows you to type in a keyword or phrase and view results instantly. Placing quotes around a proper name or exact phrase can help to narrow results. See more about Quick Search below.

Advanced Search: Allows users to narrow or broaden a search by using various tools and filters. See a more detailed explanation on Advanced Search and how it works below.

Subject Browse: Ideal for most users, especially students looking to refine a broad research topic, the Subject Browse on the Home Page features a list of pop culture subject categories, from "Arts and Visual Culture" and “Film” to “Music” and "Technology and Media." Clicking any of the broad subject areas will take the user to the Browse, which allows more detailed access to subjects related to the broad subject category. Results that link to related content in PCU will appear in the main pane of the Browse page. The user can then further limit their browse by time periods, people, and places. For more information about the Browse, see below.

Features:In the middle part of the Home Page, you’ll find a Feature area, which contains the latest, most relevant, and best posts from the PCUBlog. Click on the title of the featured post or the “see more” link at the bottom of the post if it’s been excerpted to see the full text of the post. These post will almost always link to relevant content in PCU, either within the text of the post or in the “See Also” section alongside it.

Right Column Navigation:On the right-hand side of the Home Page, users are given a glimpse of the hottest content in PCU.

Navigating Entry Pages

Most entries in PCU are closely related to other entries within the database. We’ve made it easy to get to that related material in the left and right columns alongside each entry.

Book Contents: Most books included in PCU are available in their entirety. If the entry you are viewing is one of them, the left column of the page contains the complete table of contents from that book. The Book Contents are arranged in an expandable list format, so you can jump to another entry or section of the book if you wish, or use the “previous” and “next” buttons at the top of the contents to go through the book entry by entry for more of an “e-book” experience.

Related Resources: At the top of the right column on the entry view is a list of materials related to the entry. These include:

• Images: Photos, maps, illustrations, and other visual elements that have been indexed similarly to the entry being viewed.
• External Links: Vetted web sites that have been indexed similarly to the entry being viewed.
• Skills Center: Lesson Plans that have been indexed similarly to the entry being viewed.

More Like This: When viewing a particular entry, the subjects, time periods, people, and places that have been tagged to that entry appear under this heading in the right column. Click the check box next to any or all of the terms and click “Find More” to see other entries that have been tagged or indexed using similar terms.

Cite: At the top right, clicking here will provide you with a pop-up window that contains the complete MLA and Chicago Manual of Style citation for the entry you are viewing.

Email: All authenticated PCU users have the option of emailing themselves search results as well as full text content or links to content by clicking on the email link that appears at the top right of the screen when they have accessed a list of search results or a piece of content. Content is limited to one piece of content or one set of search results per email.

Users have the option of sending either plain text (printer-friendly) or HTML email. Content includes appropriate citation information and, if the email is sent in HTML, it will also include any images. When emailing search results, you will only be able to send a link to the search you performed, as providing full text of page after page of search results would not make your email server/provider very happy.

Print: When viewing an entry you have the option of clicking the “print” link at the top right side of the entry view page to access a "printer friendly" version of the page without any navigation elements. Your browsers print menu should pop up automatically, allowing you to print a "clean" copy of the entry. A complete MLA and Chicago Manual of Style citation of the entry will automatically appear at the bottom of the printed page.

Permalink: If you navigated to the entry through a search or browse, the URL of the page will contain some code at the end of it that, while important, is extraneous for most purposes. Clicking the “permalink” link removes it, giving you the most concise URL to bookmark, cut-and-paste into a citation, or copy for future reference.

Browsing

The main content of the database has been thoroughly indexed by a team of editors and librarians using a controlled vocabulary that Greenwood created especially for Pop Culture Universe. Every entry, biographical entry, image, and web link has been indexed and tagged according to this defined vocabulary. For more information on the indexing of PCU, see the Indexing section below. The site contains three types of browsing that provide access to the indexing, each tailored to a different type of user and research need:

1. Subject Browse: Ideal for first-time users unfamiliar with PCU or with pop culture in general, the Subject Browse appears on the left side of the Home Page. This first-level browse features a selected list of broad subject categories covered in the database, such as Arts and Visual Culture, Film, Music, Recreation and Leisure, Sports, TV and Radio, and Technology and Media.

   
   

   Clicking on any of them will take you directly to the Browse page, with the term you clicked pre-selected and expanded to reveal the secondary subjects associated with the subject category. Results for items tagged with any of the associated subjects will appear in the results pane. You can then limit the results you see by clicking on one of the secondary subjects, or selecting a decade or year, a person, or a place from the sections below in the left column.

2. Browse: For students and other casual users who want to see a little more detail, the Browse is available by clicking the Browse button at the top right of every page on the site. This takes the user to a two-column screen (see below), which makes looking through the various types of information in the index easy.



3. Instructions: In the first (left) column, a simple list of broad subject categories appears in the Subject pane at the top. This list of categories is expandable: click on the +/- sign next to the term to reveal or hide the second-level subjects associated with the subject category. If you click on any of the broad categories, you will see all content that has been tagged with any of the second-level subjects associated with the category in the Results pane to the right. The list of those subjects will be revealed, and you can select any one of them to narrow your browse to that particular subject. (You may need to use the scroll bar to see them all.) For example, if you click “Film” under Subject in the left column, it will expand to show the 28 subjects associated with it (from “B Movies” to “Westerns”), and all items that have been tagged with any of those subjects will appear in the results column. If you click on “Action and Adventure,” the results list will be shortened to include only items that have been tagged with that subject.

   Beneath the Subject pane in the left column is the Time pane. If you’re interested in all aspects of pop culture in a certain time period, this is the place to start your browse. This list is also expandable, so you can either browse by a certain decade (or era for those years prior to 1900) or expand the list to select a certain year within that decade. If you click on the decade or era, you will see all content that has been tagged with any or all of the years within that decade or era in the Results pane. If you have already selected a subject from the Subject pane, clicking on any of the time periods will limit the hit list in the Results pane to only items that have been tagged with the decade, era, or year you selected.

   The People pane just below the Time pane is the place to go if you have a particular name in mind, or if you’d like to simply browse through the thousands of names we have tagged in PCU. Click on any of the letters or the +/- to reveal or hide all of the names under that letter. Last names almost always appear first, but where it would be silly to do so (and really, wouldn’t “Cent, 50” or “Dre, Dr.” be silly?) we kept them in natural order. Note that group names (e.g., Fleetwood Mac, R.E.M., The E Street Band) also appear in the People pane.

   The Place pane towards the bottom of the left column works similarly to the others. The expandable list begins on the continent level, so you can use the +/- buttons to work your way down to the country, region, state, city, and (in some cases) places within the city of your choice. Please note that a place is only tagged to a piece of content if it contains pertinent information about that geographic location. For example, if an article is about a singer that was born in Chicago, we wouldn’t give that article a “Chicago” tag. But if that singer somehow affected or was affected by the city of Chicago, then we would assign a “Chicago” tag to it. Got it?

   Note that you can use the Subject, Time, People, and Place panes interchangeably and in concert with one another. You can begin your browse in any pane, then limit your browse results by any of the other terms in any of the other panes. Or not—all panes default to “all,” so if you, say, don’t care about time period, just leave that pane alone, and your results will include everything in the database whether or not it has been tagged with a time period.

   The aforementioned Results pane contains brief information about each item that matches your browse terms. There are separate columns for Type (Entry, Biography, Image, or Web Link), Title, Book (i.e., the book that the content comes from, if applicable), and Author (again, if applicable) of the content item. The last column (“Details”) allows you to show/hide more details about the item, including subject tags and first line of the entry. Clicking the Title will take you directly to that item.

4. Index: The best way to quickly access every one of the thousands of terms used in our controlled indexing vocabulary, the full Index page is also designed in a simple, two-column format. The left pane shows the indexing terms, defaulting to show “All” tags in PCU. Use the other tabs across the top of the pane to see only one of the four types of indexing terms we used: Subjects, People, Movies, or TV Shows. Use the alphabetical navigation at the top of the pane to jump to any letter, and the scroll bar on the right to work your way down the list of terms.

   

   The right pane shows any content that has been tagged with the term you select in the left pane. It also defaults to show all results, but can also be limited to show only Images or Web Links. Using the “Images” tab is a great way to use the Index to browse through the hundreds of images in the site, as a thumbnail sneak peek is provided for each and every image result. Here’s an example, browsing for Paul Newman images only:

   

Searching

Quick Search

The Quick Search option, available at the top left of nearly every page in PCU allows you to type in key words or phrases and view the results. Keep in mind that multiple search terms will be joined together with Boolean ANDs, and that surrounding your search terms with quotation marks will only return results for that exact phrase. For example, a Quick Search for "Babe Ruth" (without quotes around it) will return all content containing "Babe" AND “Ruth,” while a search for “Babe Ruth” (with quotes around it) will return all content with the words "Babe" AND "Ruth" in that exact order somewhere in the title, body, or indexing metadata.

The Quick Search will return common plurals of any terms you use, so searching for “automobile” will also return entries that contain “automobiles.” Since this option is potentially a simple and broad search, we recommend that users with specific topics or results in mind use the Advanced Search, which allows you to control results with a powerful set of filters and other tools.

Advanced Search

Keyword Search: This option in Advanced Search works much like a standard search screen in many major search engines, with some minor differences. For Keyword Searches, all Boolean operators except wildcards will be removed within each keyword box in order to build the most reliable query. You add the Boolean operators “AND,” “OR,” or “NOT” between keyword boxes by selecting one of them from the pull-down boxes to the left of the screen. The pull-down boxes to the right of each keyword box give you the option of looking for your keywords within only the Subject or Title of each piece of content.
Generally speaking, the more boxes you use the more specific your query will be and the fewer results you’ll see.

Boolean Search: This option offers even more powerful search capabilities than the Keyword Search. Those who choose to use this option must write their query using specific Boolean terms. For convenience, a drop-down menu with all the available options is provided. Selecting terms will automatically insert them into the query.

Search Filters: Also available in the Advanced Search are four scrollable panes towards the bottom of the screen allow you to limit your results to particular Subjects, Names, Time Periods, or Places. You may select more than one of them by holding the “Control” button while you click through them. Searches default to returning all Subjects, Names, Time Periods, and Places if none are selected.

Boolean Search Operators: The Search Operators PCU’s search engine understands are:

Adjacency and Near Operators: When used, the adjacency operator specifies the order in which terms must appear and how far apart those terms can be. For example, a result for the search term "Rock ADJ3 (Roll OR Music)" must contain "Rock … Roll" or "Rock … Music" no more than three words apart and in that order to be returned. An entry with only "Music … Rock" would not be returned. The near operator disregards the order of terms and looks instead only for distance between them.

Search Results

Sort Options: Results can be filtered by the four types of content in the database by clicking the appropriate tab:

Full Text (default): Entries, most of them coming from book content.

Biographies: Entries that have been specially tagged for containing detailed biographical information about people or groups.

Images: Photos, illustrations, charts, and maps.

Resources: Includes relevant web links and other “non-book” material.

Decades Search Results

If you type in a keyword in Quick Search or Advanced Search that has year or decade in it, such as "1984," your search results list will likely start with an invitation to explore material about the decade, in this case The 1980s, contained in the Decades Pages of PCU. The Decades Pages are one-stop guides to the icons, idols, and ideas of each decade from the 1920s to the present. They provide helpful overviews to each decade as well as ready reference lists of the major films, movie stars, TV shows, songs, books, Broadway shows, awards, fads, new products, discoveries and inventions, new words and phrases, fashion trends, sports champions and award winners, and obituaries for each year within the decade. Clicking on the link in this Search result will take you to the “Overview” section for the 1980s.

Search within Results: If the results of your Search are not exactly what you wanted, or if a search for a common term results in too many hits, you can refine your results by searching within them. On the Search Results page go to the "Quick Search" box, type in an additional search term, check the "Search within Results” box, and "Go." For example, a Quick Search for "Cars" may return hundreds of results, but if you enter "Ford" in the Search box and click on Search within Results, you will get a much smaller and more specific hit list.

Search Relevancy: Results for Quick Search and Advanced Search are weighted. The appearance of the search term (or terms) in the title of the article is weighted most highly, followed by its appearance in the title of the book from which the article is taken, its appearance in the indexing terms used to classify the content, and the number of times the term (or terms) appears in the article itself. In other words, if the term appears in the title of the article it will generally appear higher on the list of results than an article that contains the same term only in the body of the article.

Search Tips

Case Sensitivity, Special Characters, and Stemming: Searching is not case sensitive. A search for "bob dylan," "Bob Dylan," and "BOB DYLAN" will return the same results in the same order. Modified characters, such as "ñ," "é," or "ì," can be typed into the Search box simply as "n," "e," or "i." Words can be stemmed using the single character wildcard, ?, or the multiple character wildcard, *, as described above.

Multiple Search Windows: If a user opens more than one browser window and searches are conducted in them, the most recent Search overwrites all others. For this reason, we recommend that users launch only one browser window at a time.

Indexing

All of the material included in Pop Culture Universe has been reviewed, analyzed, and tagged with indexing terms by a group of expert librarians and editors. We developed a controlled vocabulary especially for PCU that was used by all indexers of the site, to ensure consistency. This vocabulary was developed by Greenwood editors, beginning with the subjects within the academic field of pop culture, as defined by the Popular Culture Association, and evolving from there.

The indexing terms fall under four distinct categories:

1. Subjects: We identified over 175 subjects, most of which fall under a broader subject category. Here’s a list of the broad subjects, click one to see sub-subjects:

Arts & Visual Culture
Comic art & cartoons
Dance
Pornography & sexual representation
Theatre (incl. musicals)
Vaudeville
Visual Arts (incl. Painting & Sculpture & Photography)

Clothing, Fashion, & Appearance
Appearance (hair, piercings, tattoos, body adornment)
Body image (weight, anorexia)
Clothing (everyday clothing)
Fashion (couture, fashion industry, trends)

Ethnic & Group Culture
African American Culture
Arab American Culture
Asian American Culture
Caribbean American Culture
Ethnic & Group Culture (General)
European American Culture
GLBT Culture
Jewish American Culture
Latino American Culture
Mexican American Culture
Native American Culture
Women

Film
Action & Adventure Film
Adaptation (also under TV & Radio)
Animation/Anime
“B” Movies
Chick Flicks & Romance
Children’s Film
Comedy & Slapstick Film
Cult
Documentary Film
Drama Film
Espionage
Film (General)
Film Industry
Film Noir
Film Technique
Foreign Film (incl. British)
Gangster & Mob Film
Historical films (incl. War movies)
Horror (Film)
Independent film
Martial Arts
Musicals (film)
Political Films
Sci-Fi & Fantasy (film)
Scores & soundtracks
Silent Era
Westerns (Film)

Food & Drink
Diet
Dining out
Drink (soft drinks, alcohol, water)
Food
Junk food & fast food

Literature
Bestsellers & Popular Fiction
Children’s Literature
Detective & Mystery literature
Dime Novels & Pulps
Historical fiction
Horror literature
Literature (General)
Nonfiction
Poetry
Romance literature
Sci-Fi & Fantasy (literature)
Shakespeare

Music
Bluegrass
Blues
Censorship (see also: Lit, TV & Radio)
Classical (opera, Gilb & Sull, etc.)
Country & Western
Disco
Folk
Gospel Music
Jazz & Swing
Latin American & Caribbean
Music Industry
Musicals (music)
Pop music (top 40 stuff of any era)
Punk
R&B, Soul, & Funk
Ragtime
Rap & Hip Hop
Reggae
Rock
Songwriting & Songs
World Music (Int’l music that doesn’t fit a category above)

Politics
Campaigns & Elections
Media & Politics
Politics & Law (General)
Protests & Political Action

Recreation & Leisure
Carnivals, Fairs, & Amusement Parks
Fads
Holidays & Festivals
Leisure Activities
Social Dance
Toys & Games
Travel & tourism
Video Games (see also: Technology)

Religion & Spirituality
Astrology
Mythology
Philosophy
Religion & Spirituality (General)

Sports
Auto Racing
Baseball
Basketball
Boxing
College Sports
Extreme Sports
Fitness & Exercise
Football
Golf
Horse Racing
Ice Hockey
Ice Skating
Olympics
Rodeo
Skiing
Soccer
Sports broadcasting (see also: TV)
Sports Broadcasting
Sports Business
Sports (General)
Surfing
Swimming
Tennis
Track & Field
Women in Sports
Wrestling

Technology & Media
Computers
Electronic Communications (email, IM)
Internet (blogs, social networking, etc.)
Media (mass/new media, coverage, etc.)
Technology (breakthroughs, improvements, developments)
Video Games (see also: Recreation)

TV & Radio
Action & adventure (TV)
Adaptation (see also: Film)
Animation (TV)
Censorship (see also: Music)
Children’s TV
Comedy & Slapstick (TV)
Documentary TV
Drama (TV)
Game shows
Made for TV Movies
Mini-Series
Music TV (MTV, Amer. Idol)
News
Radio (NPR, talk, serials, music)
Reality TV
Religious programming
Science fiction (tv)
Soap operas
Sports broadcasting (see also: Sports)
TV (General)
TV industry (networks, jobs, etc)
Talk shows
Variety Shows
Westerns (TV)
Whodunnits (Crime/Detective, Espionage)

Others (Miscellaneous)
Architecture & Housing
Celebrity Culture
Civil War
Class & Culture
Cold War
Comedy & Humor
Crime & Criminals
Drugs & Alcohol
Environment
Feminism
Gender
Great Depression
Korean War
Military Culture
Newspapers & Magazines
Pop Psych
Pop Science & Inventions
Roaring Twenties
Science
Sexuality
Shopping & Consumer Culture
Speech & Language
Stories & Legends
Suburban & Rural Culture
Terrorism
Transportation
Urban Culture
Vietnam War
World War I
World War II
Youth Culture


2. Names: We developed a list of thousands and thousands of names of people and groups, from “A Tribe Called Quest” (the rap/hip hop group) to “Zwigoff, Terry” (Director of the 2001 film Ghost World). For people, last names almost always appear first, but where it would be silly to do so (e.g., “Dr. Dre” or “Big Punisher”) we kept them in natural order.

   Note that we only tagged a piece of content with a name if it contains significant, detailed information about that person or group. So an entry that mentions Martin Scorsese in passing will not have a “Scorsese, Martin” tag, while an entry that talks about a portion of his life and/or his contribution to pop culture will have a “Scorsese, Martin” tag. Therefore, if you’d like to see every piece of content that makes reference to Martin Scorsese, you should use the Quick Search, while if you’d like to see only the PCU content that provides significant information about him, you should use the Browse or the Index.

3. Movies and 4. TV Shows: We also developed a list of thousands of Movies and TV Shows, from “The A-Team (1983)” to “Zorro (1957).” The year the movie or TV show premiered in the U.S. is noted just after the title, and leading “The”s, “A”s, and “An”s have been flipped to the end of the title for easier reference, e.g., “Clockwork Orange, A (1971).”

   Note that, similar to the Names, we only tagged a piece of content with a Movie or TV Show if it contains significant, detailed information about that movie or show. So an entry that mentions “I Love Lucy” in passing will not have an “I Love Lucy (1951)” tag, while an entry that talks about the show and/or its contribution to pop culture in significant detail will have an “I Love Lucy (1951)” tag. Therefore, if you’d like to see every piece of content that makes reference to that TV show, you should use the Quick Search, while if you’d like to see only the PCU content that provides significant information about it, you should use the Browse or the Index.

Greenwood Skills Center

A separate, supplementary site to Pop Culture Universe, the Skills Center contains a slew of educational tools and tutors to bring pop culture into the classroom, and to make PCU much more useful in schools and the libraries that support them.

The Skills Center contains for different sets of content:

1. Lesson Plans: There are 25 lesson plans, specially created to engage students by using elements of pop culture. Most of the lesson plans can be used to teach History, English/Literature, Government/Citizenship, and Journalism/Media Literacy, though there are others that are perfect for the Social Studies/Sociology, Science/Psychology, Music, Art, and Ethnic Studies classroom. You can browse through the 25 lesson plans by Subject area at the top of the left column, or list all of them on one page by clicking “View all lesson plans” on the bottom of that column. There is a teacher’s version (containing an Essential Question, Objectives, Rationale, Discipline(s) covered, Standards, Pacing, Activities, Activity Extension, Assessment models and rubrics, and Links to content) and a student version (including a Mission and Activities only) that can be printed out and distributed to the class.

2. Research Tutors: For students that need a little help with some of the basics of research, writing, and media literacy, we have entertaining and thought-provoking visual presentations specially commissioned by Greenwood to guide students through the fundamentals. These play through like a movie (note: Flash required), but are easily navigable by either the tabs at the top of the screen. Pop quizzes test the student’s knowledge of key concepts along the way. There’s an optional audio portion of the presentation that expands upon the points that appear on each screen, which you can turn off or on (it defaults to “on”). You can read along with the audio portion by clicking the full transcript link.

3. Wizards: Similar to the Research Tutors, these specially commissioned wizards make performing basic research, writing, and presentation tasks easy and—dare we say—fun. They walk the student step-by-step through a common classroom assignment, and at the end of the process, deliver (via print, email, or MS Word) notes or a rough draft to use in crafting the final copy. They are more interactive than the Research Tutors: the student controls the page-by-page presentation, and many of the screens ask the student to answer certain questions or enter data before moving on to the next screen. There’s also an audio portion of the wizards that expands upon the points that appear on each screen, which you can turn off or on (it defaults to “on”). You can read along with the audio portion by clicking the full transcript link (it will appear in a separate window).

4. Professional Reading: A special area of the Skills Center just for teachers and librarians, the Reading Room contains 11 full-text books covering issues of Technology, Research, and Today’s Classroom; Avoiding Cheating and Plagiarism; Media Literacy; and Using Pop Culture in the Classroom and Library. Click on any title from the list on the Reading Room page to start reading. Note: You need to be an active PCU subscriber to view full-text book content. You will be authenticated through your library’s system or asked to provide a username and password.