Library Tutorials

Advanced Searching using One Search:

Step 1: In order to use the Advanced Search in One Search you first need to perform a Basic Search.

Step 2: Type your search term into the search box and press enter. In this example, we are doing research on immigration, so type “immigration”.

Step 3: We got over 2 million results! That is too many to look through, so we want to narrow our search to get fewer results. Using the Advanced Search helps to visualize your search in One Search.  

Step 4: Click on Advanced – it is near the search box, next to the star.

Step 5: You can limit your results to any of the subtopics related to immigration by adding Search Terms. For example, for issues related to why women immigrate, type in Immigration and Women.

Step 6: If you use the word AND you are using a Boolean operator. Boolean logic forms the basis of mathematical sets and, in the case of One Search, database logic.

Boolean operators connect your search words together to either narrow or broaden your set of results. The three basic Boolean operators are: AND, OR, and NOT.

Use Boolean operators to focus a search, particularly when your topic contains multiple search terms, like immigration AND women.

You can also use Boolean operators to include synonyms to broaden your search, like immigration AND (women OR girls).

Step 7: You can also limit your search by publication date. Click Last 12 Months to only see results published in the last year.

Step 8: There are lots of different types of sources, or content types, in One Search including articles, books, and other sources you might not have thought of, like music scores. You can scroll down or type in a content type, like newspaper.

Step 9: If you want to limit your search to only peer-reviewed or scholarly journal articles, click Peer-Review below under Limit to.

Step 10: You can narrow your topic by choosing different disciplines. If you wanted to see the history of immigration you can narrow your search to History or Public Health, Social Work or any disciplinary angle you want to adopt for your assignment.

Step 11: You can change the Language to return only results in English or you can narrow to Espanol if you only want, for example, Spanish speaking publications.

Step 12: Exclude From Results helps you to eliminate excessive newspapers, and articles that only review books, and college students dissertations on immigration. 

Step 13: Expand Your Results will include results from outside our library's collection including links to web guides from other libraries.

These are the options in One Search Advanced. Refer to the One Search: Basic Search page to see how to get to the full text of articles, how to link to your sources, and how to cite them.