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Searching Step-by-Step

Step 1: Choose resource type.  Step 2: Select search terms.  Step 3: Filter results.

Step 1

  • Choose a tab. What type of item do you need?

This box only searches physical items and ebooks. If you need articles, try Academic Search Complete or ProQuest Central. 

Step 2

Searching by Title

  • Add ti: before entering the title.

For example, if you are searching for the book American Gods you would put in the search box:

ti:American Gods

Searching by Author

  • Add au: before entering the author’s name

For example, if you are searching for the books Neil Gamian you would put in the search box:

au:Neil Gaiman

Searching by Keywords

  • Use keywords and key phrases
  • You may need to break your complex topic down into ideas and concepts

For example, if your topic is “In what ways does intimate partner violence affect the queer community?” your keywords and phrases might be:

intimate partner violence, identity abuse, queer communities, LGBT people, intersectionality

  • Use AND, OR, and NOT to combine keywords and phrases

For example, using the topic above your search may look like:

Intimate partner violence AND queer communities

You may want to put phrases in quotation marks if you are looking for an exact phrase:

“Intimate partner violence” AND LGBT

Step 3

  • Use the filters (also called limiters) to the left of the results to narrow.

For example, to only see books published in the last five years click on “Publication Date” and select “Last 5 Years” then click “Apply Year Range” to see the results.