In this video, we are going to focus on using Scholar OneSearch to search for books and eBooks in the library. Scholar OneSearch is set to look both in the library catalog and for articles in the library’s article searching tools. To focus in on books, it is most efficient to change the setting so that you are searching in the library catalog only. Once you have made that change, you can type in a topic; for example, “wind power policy,” and search. Anytime you do a search, you want to think about alternative terms that you might use. For example, if we didn’t find enough with wind power policy, we might look for wind energy policy.
Right below the search box you will see the “sign in” button. It is a good idea to sign in to Scholar OneSearch because that allows you to perform a number of functions like requesting books from libraries, saving materials for future use and so on.
When you sign in, you will be asked to put in your “myNEU Username” password. This is the same procedure you will use whenever you are off campus. When you want to search one of the library’s search tools and you are not on the campus, you will be required to log in as you saw me do just there.
We have 165 results on wind power policy, and to the left of the screen you will see a number of tools for filtering your search. For example, if we want to focus in on books as opposed to government documents were dissertation or video, we’re just going to click here. Our next choice with books is “available in the library” versus “fulltext online.” You can see here that the library is primarily purchasing eBooks at this point. We have 105 eBooks as opposed to 18 print books.
As you go down the list, you will see whether a book is online. You will see the “online access” note immediately after it. If we have a book in print, you will see the call numbers, and again you are seeing how our collection is predominantly an eBook collection at this point.
To find out more information about any given book, click on the title, and you will be able to look at related links. In the case of eBooks it will link you out to the book. Most are downloadable. You may also print pages from those or download individual chapters as well. If you are using a citation management software system; for example, our Refworks or Endnote, you are going to be able save the bibliographic information about the book you selected to that citation management software. If you decide you want to save the book for future use, just click on the “pin” and the book will be added to your library. Your eBook library is right appear at the top called “my favorites,” and you will see what we had saved right here.
At the top of the screen you will also see “search other libraries.” If you did not find enough information on wind power in our library, or if you were looking for a specific book and you didn’t find that you can click here where it says “search other libraries,” and we will look at libraries around the US and around other parts of the world. We are part of what is called the Boston Library Consortium, and you will see that many of our partners hold a number of these books. Should you want to borrow a book from another library, you can click here and you can request the book through our interlibrary loan service. It will be sent to you with a couple of days and you pick it up at the Snell Library.
Just one note of caution here: we can only borrow books that are in print format. We can’t borrow electronic books for you.
And going back to the library catalog again, if we go back to our search and we do our research on wind power, again we can go through the whole list of results find more materials. You will also find other ways to make your search a little smaller here. The search we covered a number of years. You can’t change the date to limit or you can look with our product research. We have 165 books on wind power. If you wanted to focus specifically on policy or you wanted to focus in specifically on those wind power books that focused on sustainable development, you could do that as well.