Question: When I use Smart Search I get too many results. How can I find what I’m looking for without scrolling through page after page of seemingly irrelevant results?

Answer: Smart Search is designed to provide you with information from a variety of sources. To zero in on specific information or sources, you can do a broad search (the default search) and then narrow the results down to what you’re looking for or you can refine your search up front.

If you are looking for information about a topic doing a broad, default search, Smart Search will provide you with links to a lot of information. The default search looks for all items that contain the words in your search string in any order, anywhere in the record. After the results are returned, you can focus in on the types of information you are looking for by using the Refine My Results facets on the right side of the result page. Are you looking for only online resources? Follow the online resources link under the Top Level facet to limit the result set to those resources that are available online. Do you want to narrow your search results to only German language videos? Use the Language and the Genre/Form facets. The numbers in parenthesis indicate how many records you’ll see if you refine by a particular facet.

If you are looking for a specific title, author, topic or format when you do a search, change the Limit to: options that can be found directly under the search box. You can specify a particular format (books, journals, images, maps, music scores, etc.) You can specify that the words you use in your search simply be in the record somewhere in any order, or you can change it to “with my exact phrase” and only look for the words in the order that you typed them. And finally, you can change where the system will look for your search words within the record from “anywhere in the record” to specifically look at just the title, or just an author/creator, or in the table of contents (TOC), etc.

Question: When I’m searching for an online resource, I find catalog records for the resource, but it’s not intuitive that I need to go to the full record (click on the title) and then figure out how to link to the resource. Can you make it easier to access online resources?

Answer: When you perform a search in Smart Search, you first receive a list of brief records for your result set. The only time you need to go to the full record (click on the title) is if you want more information about the item. Smart Search is designed to get you access or access information as quickly as possible. In the lower right of each brief record is a link to make it easy to access your item. The list of access links includes:

Online access (GetIt) – provides online access to databases, digital images/collections, journal articles, web pages, etc.)

Available in your library (GetIt) - provides access to the holdings list in the Libraries’ catalog, InfoHawk. This access link appears when the item is currently available for check out. The holdings list provides location information for the item.

Checked out (GetIt) – provides access to the holdings list in the Libraries’ catalog, InfoHawk. This access link appears when the libraries own the item, but it is currently checked out by another user, or is unavailable at the moment. The holdings list, in addition to location information, also provides status information about the item (due date if it’s checked out; process status information; request and recall information).

Check library holdings (GetIt) - again, this link provides access to the holdings list in the Libraries’ catalog, InfoHawk. This access link appears when the system is unable to determine whether or not the item is available. We may own multiple copies and one or more are checked out; the item may have multiple volumes; the item may be in processing somewhere in the libraries.

Q: When I search for “ebsco”, I get records for many different journal titles that are available through EbscoHost, but I don’t get a record to link to Ebsco directly.

A: Ideally, when you are searching for a known item, it’s reasonable to expect that it will be at the top of the list. We can address issues like this by tweaking the data locally, or by tweaking the relevance ranking algorithm (which falls under product development by the vendor). To address this issue, we’ve locally added “hot word” functionality for resources that are commonly searched. This functionally puts a link to the resource above the result set.

Beginning this fall, UI Libraries users can search smarter. The new and improved Smart Search on the UI Libraries website provides a single search box that searches the InfoHawk Catalog, the Iowa Digital Library, E-resources, E-books, E-journals and even journal articles.

During this early release period, we want to hear about your experience using Smart Search. We will compile these responses to continue improving functionality for our library users.

Find Resources allows you to search the Libraries online catalog - InfoHawk; the Libraries rich collection of e-journals, e-books, databases and the Iowa Digital Library.

When you search Find Articles, you can find journal articles from several onlne publications for a variety of subject areas with one search. Following is a list of databases that are searched for each of the subject areas:

• General Resources
  Academic Search Elite (EBSCO), Periodicals Index Online (Historical), Readers’ Guide Retro (WILSON) and Newspaper Source (EBSCO).
  
  
• Art
  Art Full Text (WILSON), Art Index Retro (WILSON), Avery Index to Architecture, Bibliography of the History of Art, JSTOR Art & Art History and JSTOR Architecture & Architectural History
  
  
• Business
  ABI/Inform (ProQuest), Business Source Complete (EBSCO), EconLit, JSTOR Business, JSTOR Economics, Factiva, and PsychINFO (Ovid)
  
  
• Communication
  CIOS/ComAbstracts, Communication & Mass Media Complete (EBSCO), Film & Television Literature Index, and Academic Search Elite (EBSCO)
  
  
• Education
  Academic Search Elite (EBSCO), Education Full Text (WILSON), ERIC (OVID), PsycINFO (Ovid), and Web of Science (ISI).
  
  
• Engineering
  Compendex and Inspec (Ei Village 2), Web of Science (ISI), and Academic Search Elite (EBSCO)
  
  
• Government Resources
  CQ Researcher Plus Archive, GPO Access via Firstgov and SourceOECD
  
  
• Health Sciences
  CINAHL Plus (EBSCO), Health Reference Center (Gale), Health Source: Nursing (EBSCO), and PubMed
  
  
• Law
  Academic Search Elite (EBSCO), CQ Researcher Plus Archive, CQ Supreme Court Collection, Law Journal Library (Hein Online), and JSTOR (All Subjects)
  
  
• Math
  MathSciNet (AMS), Science Direct (Elsevier), SpringerLink (MetaPress), and Web of Science (ISI)
  
  
• Music
  International Index to Music Periodicals Full Text (ProQuest), JSTOR Music, Project Muse, and RLIM Music (OCLC)
  
  
• Physics
  Institute of Physics Journal (IOP), Science Direct (Elsevier), SpringerLink (MetaPress), Inspec (Ei Village 2), and Web of Science (ISI)
  
  
• Political Science
  CQ Weekly (CQ Press), JSTOR Political Science, PAIS International (CSA), Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (CSA) and Academic Search Elite (EBSCO)
  
  
• Psychology
  Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (CSA), PsycINFO (Ovid), PubMed, and Web of Science (ISI)
  
  
• Religion
  Academic Search Elite (EBSCO) and ATLA with ATLA Serials (EBSCO)
  
  
• Social Work
  AgeLine (CSA), PsycINFO (Ovid), Social Services Abstracts (CSA), Social Work Abstracts (EBSCO), Sociological Abstracts (CSA), and Academic Search Elite (EBSCO)
  
  
• Sociology
  AgeLine (CSA), GenderWatch (ProQuest), JSTOR Sociology, PsychINFO (Ovid), Sociological Abstracts (CSA), and Academic Search Elite (EBSCO).