Overview

         Welcome to LibraryFind! This tool is a one-stop-shopping tool for academic searching. Additionally, LibraryFind will learn how users search and the most frequent searches will be returned faster.
This tool is undergoing continuous development, improvement, and refinement. In the coming months, you will notice many improvements and new features.

FAQ

1)       Why does my search take so long?

Welcome to the world of federated search.  There are actually a couple of factors that lead to the lengthiness of retrieval time within LibraryFind.  First and foremost is the fact that the tool is querying resources from multiple targets.  Navigating between these targets does slow the overall responsiveness of the tool because each target must return its results before the display can be generated (see related question: Why doesn't is show results as they are found?).  This delay is true of all federated search tools. However, unlike other tools, we are taking an active approach to alleviating this delay for the most often queried research topics.  LibraryFind has been developed as a learning application, so the more often an item is requested, the faster that query will be run.  Over time, the query becomes cached, negating any retrieval time.  This will be an ongoing process, but one that we hope will be worthwhile.

2)       Why doesn't it show results as they are found?

Unlike most/all federated search tools, LibraryFind is unique in that we believe that the most relevant entries should be on the first page.  This means that the query must evaluate all items retrieved in the search in order to apply relevancy.  In the future, we will be looking at ways of both increasing the speed of the query as well as providing different display options so users can choose the one that best fits their searching style.

3)       Why are some titles linked, while some are not?

LibraryFind has a couple of very unique features to and this happens to be one.  The tool actually found journal holdings using our OpenURL server allowing to tool to know if a particular vendor should have an item.  If the vendor should have the item, then the link is displayed.  If not, then the title is not linked and the user can click on the "Interlibrary Loan" link to find the item.

4)       I clicked on a title and the vendor says that the article cannot be found?

There are two possible scenarios in which this could happen.  First, many vendors like Ebsco, index pre-prints.  These are items that are not yet published, but are linked because they meet our holdings criteria (i.e., we have resources to present).  In the future, these pre-print items will be marked and unlinked to minimize confusion.  The second scenario occurs because of a lack of data from outside databases.  We know that this is an issue and are looking at ways to try to accommodate these problems.

5)       Do you have an advanced search?

At this point, there isn't a formal advanced search interface, but you can change the query to search different indexes.  Currently, LibraryFind does all searches as keyword searches however, you can specify searches as title, author and subject searches by using the following mnemonics:  ti: su: au:.  Example: ti:my title

6)       How can I improve my search?

Example keyword search: Mary's River
Example phrase search: "Mary's River"
LibraryFind interprets your keyword search (Mary's River - without quotes) in the following order:
   Mary's River
   Mary's and River
   Mary's* and River*
   Mary's* or River*
So if your search is for Mary's River (without quotes), you will also see results that referenced Mary's or just referenced River. If you want to explicitly do a phrase search, you simply need to group the search with quotes, i.e., "Mary's River".

7)       How do I see only Articles, or Books?

After a search, click the desired link under the "Refine Results" section of the left navigation bar. For example, if you know that you are looking for an article on women in mathematics, enter women in mathematics and click "Find It!" After getting the search results, click the "Articles" link on the left. This will filter out any books or images that were returned in your original search and just display the pertinent articles. To return to the initial search results, select the link with your search term in the upper-left bread-crumb filter trail.

8)       How do I see the most recent items?

Select the "Date: Newest first" option from the "Sort By" drop down in the upper-right. However, if the item does not have an available date, it will appear at the end of the list, but may still be a recently published item. For example, if you are interested in the latest research on the Montessori Method, enter it in the search field and click "Find It!" Then, click "Date: Newest First" in the "Sort By" drop down of the results top-bar. If you want to return to the initial search results, select the "Relevance" option.

9)       What is the "Databases" section in the left navigation bar for?

The database links in the "Databases" section of the left navigation bar allows you to see only the results from the corresponding database. For example, if you see that "Academic Search Premiere" had over a million hits, you may want to focus on this database. You can click on the "Academic Search Premiere" link and see some of the results from that database. If those initial results don't include what you're looking for, then click on the "more from Academic Search Premiere" link. This will take you to the corresponding database where you can enter your search and see more results. To return to your initial search results, just click the Search results for "your search term" link at the top-left above the left navigation bar.

10)       How do I send myself an email containing some of my search results?

As you're searching and discovering items that you'd like to send, click on the "Save This Item" link. Anything that you add to your "My Saved Items" list will be available throughout your browser session. When you've completed your research, click the "My Saved Items" link to see everything that you've collected and enter your email address in the text field on the left-hand-side. Then click the "Email Saved Items" link and you'll have the list of records sent to you.