Simple Search

You could use Simple Search for quick keyword searching (covering authors, titles and subjects).  One major drawback to a Simple Search is that many of your results may be extraneous and off topic. 

You could do a Simple Search on former president and political leader Barack Obama.   This search retrieves over 400,000 titles by and about him and you would probably want to narrow it down.  You could click on one of the choices listed in the column to the left of the results.  The limits could include all titles available at our libraries, books, book reviews and book chapters, titles available online, peer reviewed journal articles, and open access titles.  If you limit this search to title availability and then to those available in our library there would be about 140 results, including books and book chapters by and about Barack Obama. You could also do a separate Newspaper Search for newspaper articles.

Simple Search can also be used to search by title.  If you wanted to find Avenue of Mysteries, a recent novel written by John Irving, you could do a title search.  Because Simple Search always searches by keyword the result is over 40,000 titles.  If you then click on Available in the Library, in the left column, your search can be narrowed down considerably to less than 10 titles (including this novel).  

You can also use Simple Search to find titles on specific subjects.  If you type in occupational therapy you will find over 400,000 titles.  However, you can narrow down this search by clicking in the left column and limiting it to titles available in the library.  Using this limit there are less than 100 titles, including books, videos, conference proceedings and dissertations.  You could also do a separate Newspaper Search.