Finding Books: Searching in USearch

USearch will pull results from the library's catalogue as well as the majority of our online databases at the same time. A few simple clicks will limit your search results to just books. 

If you know the topic you want to search, but aren’t sure of any titles or authors, you can do a keyword search.

• Start at the library homepage (https://library.usask.ca).  
• Click on the USearch "Books" tab to limit your search to just books. 
• Enter your search terms into the box in the middle of the page.
• Click on the search button.

The results of this search will include ebooks and print books, as well as online book chapters.

To limit your results to only print (physical) books, click on the Available in Library filter. To limit your results to only online books (ebooks), click on the Full Text Online filter instead. You can also use some of the other filters available, such as Year, to limit your results to only newer (or older!) books.

Clicking on an item's title in the search results list provides you with many details of the book including:

• Book information at the top, such as title, author, and location.
• Send to gives you options to view the citation, save the citation to a reference manager, or save, print, or email the permalink of the search result.
• Get It indicates the location of the print book (in the example below, the Science Library on the lower level), its status (which indicates if the book is available or is out of library), and the call number, which indicates the unique number assigned to a book. Write this down! - this number will help you to find the book on the shelf. 
• If the book is online (an ebook), there will be an option to View Online instead of the Get It information.
• Details, which include citation information and sometimes a table of contents or a brief description which can help you determine whether the material is useful.

The Advanced Search option in USearch allows you to easily find books by keyword, title, author, or subject, or any combination of more than one search term.

Searching for a book with the title "Turtles of the World" brought up 12 results. If you want to get even more specific, you can search for both title and author at the same time. When searching for an author, type in the author’s LAST name first, followed by the first name or initial. This will bring up exactly the book you are looking for. 

Clicking on an item's title in the search results list will give you more information about that particular book, including the location and call number information which will allow you to find the book on the shelf.

Using the Any field is the same as a basic keyword search. In the example below, we have searched for all books with Roger Barbour as the author that include the keyword "turtles".

When attempting to access online resources from home, make sure you are logged into the library's website to ensure you have full access. See the Connect from Home page below for more information.