Primo VE Help: Searching

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Being signed in will give you the best results and the most options, but is not required.

Search Options

The Search Bar at the top has two sets of options.

  • You can choose what materials you would like to search in the dropdown on the right end of the text box. 
  • You can narrow your search to specific types of items with the buttons below the search bar: Books, Articles, Videos, Journals, Images.

There are two other helpful options in this area:

  • You can click the microphone to use voice input for the search words
  • You can click Advanced Search to the far right to get more options on your initial search

Expand Your Search

After you perform a search, an Expand Your Search link appears.

  • If you are not seeing enough useful results, you can click this link.
  • This will expand your search out to the Beyond My Library search, allowing you to see and request titles from other institutions.
  • Note: If you had selected Shelved at Library, you will need to remove this filter to see results, as this search looks only for things not at our library.

More Information

For more information, check out

Refine Options

Search Filters for date, availability and resource typeThere will often be too many results. You can use the filters on the left to reduce your results.

  • Clicking on the word runs the search again using that filter.
  • Clicking to the left adds it as a filter, but you can add several this way and then Apply Filters.
  • Clicking on the right makes it a negative filter, such as NOT books or NOT Book Reviews.
  • Remember to click Apply Filters after you choose all your options.
  • You can Remember or Remove your filters in the upper left corner of your filter options.

Filters

After you search you have a lot of ways to filter your results on the left side of the page.

  • You can limit by publication date, then click Refine.
  • In Availability you can select Available Online, Peer Reviewed, Shelved at Library, and even Open Access.
  • Resource Type helps you narrow the type of material down even further to type of article or book.
    • There is also a Newspaper search in this area to search Newspaper specific databases.
  • Subjects are general academic Topics like Geology or Engineering.
  • Collection shows you which databases the results are from.
  • Library tells you which library holds any physical results.
  • Location tells you where in those libraries the items are.
  • Language tells you the language of the text of the item.
  • Journal Title gives specific journals the articles are published in.
  • Course Name appears when an item on Course Reserve is included in your results and shows which class it is for.