Scholar OneSearch Quick Tip: Search the Library Catalog

Now that Scholar OneSearch is live, we want to help you get the most out of this research tool! This is our next installment in a series of Scholar OneSearch Quick Tips. Today’s tip: searching the library catalog. The default option in Scholar OneSearch lets you search beyond Northeastern University Library holdings and includes articles from a variety of journals, because the tool is meant to help people quickly discover all kinds of information in different formats. This is the “Library Catalogs + Articles” choice that is already selected when you first start to search. But sometimes you just need to know if the NU Libraries (Snell, Law, African-American Institute) have a specific book, video, or journal, and you don’t want all that extra stuff. That’s where you want to click the area marked above to select a different option. Choose “Library Catalogs” instead. You can do this on our library home page (shown above) or in the Scholar OneSearch environment: Now when you do a search, two things will be different:
  1. No articles will be included in your results, and
  2. It will only show you books, e-books, videos, journals, etc. that the NU Libraries own or have access to.
Here I have selected “Library Catalogs” and am about to do a search on “language acquisition”: Here’s the top of my results list. I got 915 items. Notice that the items shown are a journal and a couple of books, and also that on the left-hand side under Material Type I can select just Books, or just Video and Audio, or whichever I choose, but that Articles is not one of the choices. The same search as above, under the “Library Catalogs + Articles” selection, gives over 420,000 results (!!!), most of them articles. So if you don’t want articles to overwhelm the other items, it pays to change the selection of where to search. You may also want to choose the “Library Catalogs” option when you have a specific item in mind and you want to see if the library has it. For example, let’s look for the book Life of Pi. First I’ll look using the default “Library Catalogs + Articles” option: This search brought back over 369,000 results! And the first 3 items I can see are two articles and a video. It’s not obvious from here if we have the book or not. Now let’s try it with “Library Catalogs” selected: Much better! Only 28 results, first of all, and the first two are the movie and the book, so I can see right away that we own the novel (although it was checked out at the time of writing this post). So, you can see that changing the selection to “Library Catalogs” can help make a much narrower target for your searches. If you were familiar with our old library catalog, NUCat, you’ll see that the “Library Catalogs” option mimics the types of results you would get from NUCat. What Scholar OneSearch tips would you like to learn about? Let us know! Related information:

Four Great Reasons to Sign In to Scholar OneSearch

You’ve tried the new search box on the library web page and it seems just fine. But did you know that you can get even more out of it when you sign in? Sign In to Scholar OneSearch   If you’re a current NU student, faculty, or staff member, here are 4 great reasons to sign in to Scholar OneSearch every time you use it: 1. If you sign in, you get more high-quality search results. This is because the NU Libraries subscribe to some great scholarly content that will display ONLY if you show you’re affiliated with the university. Web of Science (the Thomson Reuters citation indexes), ArtSTOR, GeoRef (American Geological Institute), and MLA Bibliography (Modern Language Association) have key scholarly citations that you will only see if you sign in with your myNEU credentials. 2. If you sign in, you can make requests. Some full text and book requesting options are only available to NU affiliates. Signing in lets you see all the options available to you. 3. If you sign in, you can save your work. Whether it’s individual citations, or whole batches of results, you can make folders for different projects, and even save searches to update and run again at a later date. Instead of having to remember another password, this service is based on the same credentials you use for myNEU. 4. If you sign in, you can see your account information. You can view and renew the items you have checked out from the library, and see the requests you have made and waiting lists you are on. And here’s another tip:

Think about connecting directly to Scholar OneSearch the next time you’re in myNEU. Just go to the “Services and Links” tab in myNEU (or use the library tab, if you’re a faculty/staff member), and look under “Useful Links”. Because Scholar OneSearch recognizes your NU identity, you will automatically be signed in. Give it a try, and let us know if you think it’s worthwhile!

Spread the word: New full-text e-resources in medicine, pharmacy, and physical therapy are now available

AccessPhysiotherapy covers physical therapy, AccessMedicine covers medical/health sciences, and AccessPharmacy is the tool of choice for pharmacy. These resources from McGraw-Hill were designed especially for instructors and students, with a focus on curricular topics, Q & A, self-assessment, core titles for assigned reading, high quality images, animation tools to convey concepts, and videos that demonstrate clinical practices.  Content can be embedded in Blackboard. Mobile access: These resources are optimized for the iPhone, Google Android devices and the Blackberry Bold. Highlights: AccessPhysiotherapy
  • 500+ videos and narrated lectures in key topics in orthopedics, neurology and sports medicine; demonstrations of various examination and treatment techniques
  • “Anatomy and Physiology Revealed”, a powerful cadaver dissection tool with imaging slides and animations
  • “Essentials of Neuroscience in Physical Therapy”, an ongoing lecture series, which combines graphics, case studies, and narration to teach key neuroscience and neuroanatomy concepts relating to physical therapy
  • “Custom Curriculum”, a cutting edge tool to assign, manage, and track the progress of student assignments
AccessMedicine
  • 77 essential medical texts, including “Harrison’s Online”, “Hurst’s The Heart”, “Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment”, and “DeGowin’s Diagnostic Examination”
  • Thousands of photos and illustrations
  • Diagnosaurus, the differential diagnosis tool
  • Interactive patient safety modules, musculoskeletal exams, case files, and Q & A
  • 200+ procedural videos and Grand Rounds lectures
AccessPharmacy
  •  Drug databases, cases, self-assessment tools, animations, and full text of these core titles:
    • DiPiro’s Pharmacotherapy: A Pathophysiologic Approach, 8e
    • Pharmacotherapy Casebook: A Patient-Focused Approach, 8e
    • Goodman & Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, 12e
    • Applied Biopharmaceutics & Pharmacokinetics, 6e
    • Basic & Clinical Pharmacology, 12e
    • Casarett & Doulls Essentials of Toxicology, 2e
    • Drug Information: A Guide for Pharmacists, 4e
    • Ganong’s Review of Medical Physiology, 24e
    • Pharmacy and Federal Drug Law Review
    • Pharmacy Student Survival Guide, 2e
    • Understanding Health Policy: A Clinical Approach, 6e
Register for a My AccessMedicine, My AccessPharmacy or My AccessPhysiotherapy account to enter the mobile sites, save and download images, bookmark content pages, view and print CE certificates, customize patient education handouts, re-run recent searches, and use the Custom Curriculum. For more information on health sciences resources, please see the biomedical and health subject guides.  

Scholar OneSearch Quick Tip: E-Journal Finder

Now that Scholar OneSearch is live, we want to help you get the most out of this research tool!  This is our first installment in a series of Scholar OneSearch Quick Tips. Today’s tip: accessing and using the e-journal finder. You can access the list of all our e-journals through the E-journal A-Z link at the top right of the Scholar OneSearch page.   Access the E-Journal A-Z list   Once you’re on the E-journal A-Z page, if you’d like to limit to a specific journal title or a research area, you can enter terms into the search box (as I did for “secondary education” here):   Searching e-journal list for a research area     More details on each title are available under the tabs. For example, you can view our holdings information for any of those journals by clicking the ‘view online’ tab:   Holdings information is available under the 'view online' tab   What Scholar OneSearch tips would you like to learn about?  Let us know! Related information:

Updated: Scholar OneSearch Replaced NUCat on July 1st, 2013

Update, July 1, 2013: Scholar OneSearch is live! We’re very excited to be able to share this new service with you, and we hope to hear your feedback about the service. WorldCat is also back online, along with all of the myNUCat functions that had been offline, login to Scholar OneSearch with your myNEU credentials to get started. Update, June 28, 2013: The interlibrary loan service WorldCat is currently unavailable due to the system changeover, but do not despair: you can still order any materials you need through ILLiad! Our apologies for the disruption in service, and thank you for understanding. We will update here when the service is restored. Update, June 26, 2013: With the change from NUCat to Scholar OneSearch, all functions of myNUCat will be offline from 11:00pm tonight, Wednesday, 6/26/13, until the new system comes online July 1. This includes placing holds, renewing materials, viewing fines, and self-service room reservations. Room reservations are still available, however, details are here. You can still borrow and return books from Snell Library, as well, you’ll just have to stop by the Circulation & Information desk by the front doors to Snell Library. Thank you for your understanding and patience during this transition, all self-service functions will be back online starting sometime on July 1st. — There’s a lot of exciting change coming to the library this summer. If you’ve been in Snell Library, you’ve seen the construction work taking place on the 1st floor, which will provide wonderful new individual and group study spaces for the Northeastern community. Another major change will occur on July 1 as our legacy NUCat library catalog is replaced by a sophisticated new research tool called Scholar OneSearch. Using Scholar OneSearch, you will be able to search the library collections, articles and more from one search box. Or, if you prefer, you will be able to limit your search to just the library collections as you did formerly with NUCat. Scholar OneSearch is the front end to a major new automated library management system in the Northeastern libraries, which is now also being implemented in many other libraries across the world, including Princeton, Purdue, Boston College, University of Minnesota and hundreds more. Because this system is new to Northeastern and relatively new to libraries in general, it will be enhanced over the summer and beyond as we gather user feedback. So we need to hear from you about any thoughts you have about Scholar OneSearch, any problems you encounter or any changes you would like to see. Meanwhile, if you have personal lists and borrowing history in your myNuCat account and you need that information, please be sure to print them out or save them before July 1st. Thank you for helping us to make your library research experience the best it can be!