New ways to find what you need....

Some of you have been waiting for this. Saint Mary's faculty, students and staff now have the option of doing a Google-like "quick search" to find out what books or journal articles the Patrick Power Library has on a particular subject. Let me explain...

If you look near the bottom of the library's web site you'll find two new search boxes. The Novanet Quick Search box does a keyword search of the Novanet catalogue. For example, if you're writing a paper on women's work in Canada, just type the words women work canada to get a list of all the books in the catalogue which deal with all three terms. It's fast and it's easy. Of course, you can still go in to Novanet and search the "old-fashioned" way but now you have a choice.

Even better, the Article Quick Search box allows you to simultaneously search seven of our most popular journal databases, including ABI, Ebsco and Sage. No more searching one database at a time (unless you want to). So, using the example above, typing women and work and canada will retrieve all of the articles in the 7 databases which include all three terms (hint: for best results use the word "and" to connect the keywords). This search box can also be found on the journal articles & databases page.

Yet another new option available to you is the simultaneous search of multiple databases of your choice. If you click the Search Multiple Databases icon on the journal articles & databases page, you will be brought to a new page. Just check off the names of the databases or groups of similar databases you want to search, enter your search terms and wait for the results.

We think these new search options will appeal to many of you but try them out and let us know what you think. Comment on this blog entry or e-mail research@smu.ca

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