Libraries Search is the search engine that pulls results from physical resources held by the University of Minnesota System, digital resources held by UMD, and interlibrary loan resources within the resource lending consortiums UMD belongs to. It pulls data from multiple places simultaneously, which can make the results overwhelming and seemingly irrelevant. However, Libraries Search is the most comprehensive resource UMD can offer as a replacement for the search function the MLA International Bibliography offered. With practice and an understanding of how the search works, Libraries Search turns into a powerful tool.
Some of the more advanced tips are found here, but this part of the guide cannot fully encapsulate how best to use the search. Please contact Sam Wolf for individual help at wolf0631@d.umn.edu. Taking a look at the Research Process Libguides will also be beneficial, as there are search tips embedded in them as well. This part of the guide is only meant for Libraries Search, but the information here can be used for other databases as well. Certain things, like wildcard characters, and filter options, change from database to database. Again, talk to Sam for specifics!
The filters found on the right side of the page after performing a search are an easy way to narrow results. The following list will showcase the most useful ones, and outline why some filters that look promising may not be all that they're cracked up to be. If you run a new search with new keywords, you will most likely have to reapply the filters you had previously selected.
This should be one of the first filters you go to. Notice that there is a difference between "Articles" and "Magazine Articles". Generally speaking, magazine articles are going to be from popular, news, and trade sources, and articles are going to be from scholarly sources. You are able to select multiple material types. Hover over the material type with your mouse, and a checkbox will show up to the left and right. The left check box includes the material type, while the right checkbox will exclude it.
For the experience closest to what MLA offers, Sam recommends including Articles, Book Chapters, and Books to begin with.
The categories in this filter require some explaining. "Available Online" will pull results that are immediately available in a digital form. "Physical Items" will include any item that is available at any of the University of Minnesota campuses. Both of these categories will automatically exclude interlibrary loan results. The "Peer Review" filter excludes books. It will also pull up results that are not, in fact, peer reviewed. This is because the journal titles are tagged as peer-reviewed, and each article within it is, by default, also tagged as such, which is why book reviews often show up when the peer review filter is checked. The "Open Access" filter will pull results from open access resources, some of which are peer reviewed!
The "Subject" filter can be very powerful, but is often misused. The subjects listed are from the Library of Congress Classification System. It would be great if every subject that applied to a resource were tagged to it, but that requires a lot of manual labor to accomplish, and there simply aren't enough librarians to do it. A single resource can have anywhere from 1-15 subjects assigned to it. Because of this, the subject filter is best utilized through selecting one or two at a time, then re-running the search with a new set of subjects chosen. This filter also has the capability to exclude subjects, the same as in Material Types.
This filter limits results by publication date. It is not uncommon for a modern-seeming search to have results from the 1800s or earlier! Depending on your information need, limiting the date range can be a great way to cut down irrelevant results.
Libraries Search uses BOOLEAN operators in its advanced search function. The operators are AND, NOT, and OR.
AND ensures that the search terms are included together in a search. Searching for "German" AND "shepherd" will only pull up results that include both terms.
NOT excludes terms from the search. Searching for "German" NOT "shepherd" will only have results with "German", and will get rid of any results that have "shepherd."
OR casts a wide net. Using OR will pull results that have one or both of the search terms. Searching "German" OR "shepherd" will yield results that have "German", results that have "shepherd", and results that have "German shepherd".
It is possible to add multiple lines to a search inquiry by clicking the "Add A New Line" link in the Advanced Search.
There are some helpful symbols that can be utilized in a search to yield specific results.
Using quotation marks around a phrase will ensure that the exact phrase is searched. For example, searching for great dane without quotation marks may pull up a result along the lines of "Hamlet the Dane, a Great Tale". Both terms are there, but they are not being recognized as one phrase. Searching for "great dane" in quotation marks will yield results that have the words in that specific order.
The next two symbols are called wildcards, and they do similar things. A question mark is a single character wildcard. Putting a question mark in place of a letter will cause the search to pull up results that include any permutation of the spelling that the question mark has identified. For example, searching for wom?n will pull up results for both woman and women.
Using an asterisk is similar, but stands in for multiple characters. For example, searching theat* will pull up results for theatre, theater, theatres, theaters, theatrical, and whatever other suffixes may apply.
Wildcards are especially useful if a spelling has not been standardized, or to cast a wider net with a single keyword, rather than coming up with a bunch of permutations and stringing them together with OR statements.
