The library has hundreds of databases filled with thousands of journals and periodicals with millions of articles, as well as a catalog full of books, videos, and other resources. In order to make searching this huge collection easier we have a discovery service, Summon. A Discovery Service is a searching tool that has the ability to search across different databases as well as print books and e-books from the library's collection. So Summon essentially acts as a one stop search engine that searches the majority of the library's resources at the same time. If searching one database is like online shopping at a specific store's website, then searching with Summon would be more like shopping at an online superstore like Amazon, where there is a lot of everything and it can get overwhelming. So, while it's a super useful tool to search all your bases at once, you have to be even more strategic so your results don't overwhelm you.
While Summon may not look exactly like the rest of the databases, it functions in basically the same way. The biggest difference is that it will have exponentially more results because it is searching most of the library's databases as well as print books and e-books from the library's collection.
Searching in Summon is fundamentally the same as searching a database. You start by putting your search directly into the Summon search bar at the top of the Library's homepage
(suu.edu/library).
After you type in your search terms combined with Boolean operators, click enter or press Search to see Summon results list. The results will look similar to databases you’ve searched, but with some slight stylistic changes. Note that you have the same advanced search options that databases have, with the multiple search bars that will appear in a pop out window when you press advanced search.
As you can see in the image below, our sample search gave us thousands of results. Just with databases, Summon shows you what type of source each result is, and even highlights whether the source is peer reviewed. It will also show you the access method right next to the article type. You can access the detailed record for each source by clicking on the Quick Look link.
Because you are searching many databases and the Library Catalog all at once, you get many search results using Summon. This means you will probably have to use the filter options to get the results down to a more manageable size. All of the filters in Summon are listed in the left sidebar, which is pretty typical of many databases as well. This will go through each filter from top to bottom.
The first filter option is a set of filters to refine your search by some really basic filters to help you limit your search quickly. They are the most common filters since they highlight what type of articles are included or how to access them.
One of the filters you might find most helpful is the Scholarly & Peer Reviewed filter. Select this filter if you are looking to find ONLY peer reviewed sources. This will filter out everything that isn't considered "peer reviewed". However, as the majority of your classes and professors will require you to use peer reviewed articles, it is a very good filter for saving time.
The Full Text Online filter narrows the results to just those sources that have the entire article available. While this might seem useful if you’re on a limited time frame, it can filter out some potentially good results that aren’t immediately available, but could be easily requested through Interlibrary Loan (ILL). So use this filter sparingly, since it’s not a relevancy based filter.
The Content Type filter option is great for narrowing down your results to a specific source type, such as searching for just books. This will search the entire library catalog and all the e-book databases. You can also limit to just Academic Journals to limit your search results to scholarly sources only. You can also limit your search to a combination of source types such as searching Newspaper Article and Magazine Article, which limits your results to just popular publications (see the Popular vs. Scholarly reading). If you don’t want to include certain types of sources in your results, you can always use the X on the right side of the content type to exclude it from your results.
The Publication Date filter allows you to filter by the date of publication, which will allow you to limit your results to just the ones in the time period chosen. It defaults to 1 year, 3 year, 5 years, and 10 years, but also gives you the option to create your own custom range, based on the range that is useful for your specific topic.
The Discipline filter is another way to narrow your results by a specific Discipline, such as economics or engineering. It is a useful tool for limiting results to that specific focus or lens that you are using for your topic.
The Subject Terms filter is helpful, as it will give you suggestions for subjects to help limit your results. These subjects are the same suggested subjects that you might have noticed in your search results. These are commonly used keywords that are approved and assigned by the databases and authors, so this is a good place to find keywords, and also limit to those results that have that subject term listed in their detailed records.
While most of the results will be in English, this doesn’t mean that they will only be in English, so the language filter tool can be good for limiting your results to a language that you can actually read. This is especially useful if you are researching for a language class and you need results that aren’t in English, such as for a Spanish class, etc.
While most professors will focus on peer reviewed sources, this doesn't mean that non-peer reviewed sources don't have their place. In fact, many professors will allow you to use a mixture of source types. It is always important to use good evaluation techniques besides just "peer review" to choose your sources (see the CRAAP Test reading). In one of the INFO 1010 assignments you will be asked to find a book or e-book, a popular article (such as newspaper or magazine articles), and a peer reviewed academic article relevant to your topic. The source type filters (in both Summon and other databases) are good ways to ensure that you find a source of each type. Use this filter to your advantage to easily search and find the right type of source.
You can get the details of any source (also called a detailed record) in the results list by clicking on the Quick Look link at the right side of the result. The detailed record has all the publication details needed to create a citation, as well as the subjects and other information about the source. It will also have the links to access the full text or create a link to share or save the source for later.
NOTE: If you are having trouble accessing an ebook, the easiest way to fix it is by clearing your browser cache, or history to reset the cookies in your browser. Here are links to instructions on how to do this in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. If you are unsure on how to do this in a different browser, search the Internet for “how to clear cache” for your particular browser.
