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QuickSearch

A guide to QuickSearch which provides a single search box to find books and articles across most of the library's collections.

Tips

Browsable

You don't have to enter any search terms, just click search and see the +230 million results

Facets

Narrow results by using facets.  Click on 'more...' under a facet to get a pop-up with include/exclude checkboxes.

Abstracts

Mouse over the title or click on the magnifying glass next to the title for a pop-up with a description and an abstract when available.

Folders

Use the folder icon next to the title to save items to the RefWorks citation management program.  Go to the 'saved items' folder to print, email, export  to refworks, etc.

Persistent Links

Save a search by copying the URL in the browser address bar,  The URL can be emailed, embedded in Blackboard, bookmarked, etc.

Widgets

Use the widget builder to easily embed customized search boxes into websites.

Search Alerts

Use the RSS icon  to add a feed for notification when new content is added that meets the search criteria.

Options

Use the Options link next to the search box to narrow to words in title or a specific author or journal publication. 

Help

Use the Help link at the top of the page for tips on phrase searching, boolean, field limiters, and wildcards.

Results Beyond the Library

Use the ' Add results beyond your library's collection' to search all +1.9 billion items known to Summon.  Click on the title of the citation to place an interlibrary loan.

No Login

No login required to search from off campus, only required to retrieve subscription content.  Great for guest researchers.

Overview

Purpose

QuickSearch provides a single search box to find books and articles across most of the library's collections.  It is powered by Summon, a web-scale discovery service from ProQuest. QuickSearch is not a replacement for discipline-specific research databases, rather it is intended as an easy-to-use alternative to Google for library research.

Tutorials

  • QuickSearch Basics - learn to find books, articles, and other materials; filter or limit your results; and manage your citations.
  • QuickSearch Advanced - learn to refine your search using discipline and subject terms; discover items beyond what is available locally to conduct more thorough searches on your topic; and using the advanced search options.

Coverage

QuickSearch is a central index of as much of library content as possible so that it is available in a single search engine. It includes over 160 million items:

  • The entire library catalog (over 1 million items)
  • Approximately 80% of the journal collection (over 60,000 subscriptions)
  • Most of the ebook content (over 200,000 book titles and chapters)
  • Other resources like archival & research guides, music, newspapers, videos...

On the Databases list, use the "databases type" filter to see what specific resources are in QuickSearch. To see if a specific journal is in QuickSearch, use the Options link next to the search box and switch from all fields to publication title to search by journal title.

Problems

QuickSearch is has several known issues and limitations:

  • It does not include all library content and subscriptions.
  • It searches the full text of content when available, which is much broader than traditional database searching.  Use the Options link next to the search box to construct narrower searches.
  • Retrieving a full-text article can sometimes fail due to discrepancies in citation information bewteen vendors.  If you have trouble retrieving content, use Ask a Librarian to request help, we can usually find it for you in another source.

Need Help?

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Mike Robinson
Contact:
907-786-1001