Canisius University | myCanisius | Desire2Learn
Primo is a powerful tool that searches the library's catalog of print and online books, videos, our article databases, scholarly content freely available on the web, and the e-books from ConnectNY. The strength of Primo is that it allows users 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 good place to start researching; however, navigating results pages can be somewhat complex.
Go to the Basic Search tab to view how-to-search videios
Basic Search
The videos below demonstrate how to search for books and articles in Primo. The first video will show a book search and the second one will show an article search. These are for basic searches. More specific searches will be shown in the tap "Other Search Platforms."
Primo searches so much information that you will often get way too many results. Using the advanced search and the filtering features of Primo can 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 Primo 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".
To Filter results, choose "Tweak your results."
Each drop down offers more ways to filter, such as "Resource Type" or other "Subject" terms that will help narrow the search.
