Library Search is QUB's discovery platform (people may also refer to it as the Library Catalogue). You can find it on the Library Home page, or by following this link.
Library Search searches a vast amount of content (including e-journals, e-books, printed books, newspapers etc. etc.). Results can be confusing, especially if you are search for a common word or name. The limit options on the left-hand side of the screen will help you to refine your search results.
The most useful limits are:
Sort by - this drop-down menu allows you to arrange search results by Relevance, Date published, Title or Author.
Availability - allows you to limit results to items available on-line (useful if you're working off-campus)
Resource Type - lets you limit to Books, Articles, Book Chapters etc. etc.
It is always worth thinking about your search topic and experimenting with different ways of expressing it. If you stick to a very narrow set of search terms you are likely to miss relevant material.
For example, if you are looking for material on the topic "Romantic Poets and Politics" you should consider breaking it into concepts and thinking of alternative terms.
Instead of Romantic Poetry you could try searching for particular poets (Blake, Coleridge, Shelley, Blake, Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson etc.). You could also try Romanticism, Romantic Poets etc. Similarly, instead of Politics you could try searching for particular events or ideas (French Revolution, American war of Independence, Slavery, Ecology, Feminism etc.).
The Advanced Search allows you to create sophisticated searches and specify the field where you want to words to be found.
The drop-down Any field menu allows you to search for words in the Title only. This can be really useful at narrowing search results.
You can use Boolean operators on Library Search, but they must be entered in CAPITALS.
If you enter words in quotations Library Search will find the exact phrase:
Great Expectations will find records that contains both words in any order.
"Great Expectations" will find records that contain the exact phrase.