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Need an item Canisius doesn't have? Try Interlibrary Loan. You can request a photocopy of an article or that a book be shipped to Canisius for you to use. Just fill out the Interlibrary Loan form.
Subject Specific Databases
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Academic Share - allows you to borrow books from other local academic libraries using your Canisius ID.
What is Primo?
Primo is a powerful tool that searches our library's resources and more. This includes the library's catalog of print and online books, ebooks, videos, most of our article databases, and scholarly content freely available on the web. The strength of Primo is that it allows you to do a quick keyword search across many of our resources at the same time, providing a comprehensive view of all types of information in many different formats (books, journal articles, etc) available on a topic.
Primo is a great place to start your research. Once you find sources that you like or are on target to your topic, you may want to go directly into one of the recommended specialized databases (listed at the top of your search screen) and conduct your search again to access more appropriate sources.
Summon searches so much information that you will often get way too many results. Using the advanced search and the limiting features of Summon, called facets, help you be more specific and focus your results.
Using the Advanced Search lets you be more specific with your search. For example, you can tell Summon to look for the author "Sally Smith", by using quotes around the phrase you will just search for records with the exact phrase of "Sally Smith," not for all records that contain the words Sally and Smith. Also, by changing the drop-down menu to author instead of all fields you can focus your search on materials by "Sally Smith" rather than about "Sally Smith".
Should I use Summon, the Classic catalog or the Journal finder?
It depends on what you are looking for.
Primo is a search engine that searches everything in the catalog plus articles (scholarly and non-scholarly) from the library databases and some digital collections. Primo is great for exploring topics. It excels at keyword searches and a provides a more comprehensive view of all the types of information that are accessible to you.
The Classic catalog is the inventory of the books, media, print journal titles and other physical items that are held in the Canisius library. The catalog provides you with more control and is best used for known title searching. You can search for title, author, subject and limit to locations, such as the Curriculum Center.
The Journal finder is the inventory of the journals (print and online) that Canisius subscribes to. The journal records contain the links to the databases that give us access to the journal and the dates available. If you are looking to search for a specific journal title then you would want to use the Journal finder.
What is Being Searched? Contents of Primo
Primo searches the books, ebooks, scholarly articles, newspaper articles, trade journal articles, magazine articles, video content, conference proceedings, governmental reports, and digital collections that Canisius owns or subscribes to.
Relevance Ranking: How It Works
Primo uses relevance ranking when organizing a result list. This algorithm is similar to that uses by search engines as it attempts to identify the most useful results based on your search and put them at the top of your result list. The relevancy rank considers many points to determine result order including: matches to your keywords, date of item, term frequency, content type, if it is scholarly/peer-reviewed, and location of keywords in prominent places such as the title or subject heading of an item.
For example: content types of matching results are analyzed (journals, books, newspaper articles, dates of publication, etc.), rewarding records that are more recent, or published in a scholarly or peer-reviewed journal.
Can't Find a Book or Article in Primo: What Do I Do?
Try the following:
The Full-Text Link Didn't Work: What Do I Do?
There are many possible reasons that a full-text link does not work, including:
If this happens, try searching for the journal through the Journals by Title search. If we have access to the journal the title will appear in the search results. Follow the link to access the e-journal directly; from there you can manually enter the citation information.
If Canisius does not have a subscription to the journal, you may request a copy of the article through Interlibrary Loan.
Report Problems
Should you encounter a problem with Summon, such as a link to a source not working or a database asking for a login, please report this to us <libweb@canisius.edu> so that we can troubleshoot the problem. Thank you for your help with this.
adapted from Syracuse University Libraries FAQ
