Limiters/Refine Your Search
Once you have done a search, your results page will offer a number of filters, or limiters, for refining your search, which are shown along the left side of the page.
These options narrow down the results set that you already have, so that it will be easier to pick out the results that best meet your needs.
Limiters work by taking away from the results that you are already looking at, so if you have too few results, you should revise your search terms instead.
Some of the most popular limiters are shown at the very top of the left-hand pane. Here, you can ask to see:items with the full-text available online, items that are scholarly/peer reviewed, physical books in the campus libraries, or ebooks available online.
Below that are some “choose-your-own” limiters. The same categories will show for every search, but the options available will change based on what is actually in your results set.
Content Type: You can filter your results by the type of publication. Some of the most common content types include:
Depending on your search, you may also see some other, less common content types. With this filter, you can either select the checkbox to see only results of that type, or select “exclude” to take away results of a particular type.
(Note: We have set this filter to automatically exclude a few content types that are usually not useful to our students. If anything has been filtered out, you will see that filter in this box, with “exclude” selected, and you can turn the filter off if you want to see those results.)
Publication Date: This filter is useful when you need recent sources. You can select from a few popular pre-set options, or enter your own custom date range by clicking the pencil icon.
Discipline: This section filters based on the field of study that the source is associated with. As with the Content Type filter, you can choose to see only results matching a certain discipline, or exclude results from a given discipline.
Tip: You can check this section for an option matching your major or the name of the class.
Subject Terms: Subject terms are terms that have been assigned by a human to describe the main topics covered in the source. If your search brought up a mixture of on-topic and off-topic results, this filter can help you narrow it down to the on-topic ones. As with some of the other filters, you can use this box to include or exclude results with a given subject term.
Tip: If you aren’t quite finding what you need in your results, this box might give you some ideas for other search terms to try.
Language: Use this section to filter by the language the article is written in. The majority of the library’s resources are in English; this filter is useful if you are seeing an unusual number of foreign-language results, or if you want sources in a different language. You can include or exclude any language shown in the list.
To search for an exact phrase–all of the words in the exact order–put quotation marks around the phrase.
Use phrase searching when results that are about your topic will probably have the exact words in the exact order. For example:
Do not use quotation marks if the words might appear in a different order:
Boolean operators–AND, OR, and NOT–express relationships between the words in your search.
AND: You want results that have both (or all) of the words. If you don’t type any other operators, Summon will assume that you want all of the words, so you don’t actually have to type AND each time.
Drunk driving AND teenagers
OR: You want at least one of the words. Use this operator to include multiple synonyms or related words in your search.
NOT: You want results that have one word, but not another.
If you are searching for a specific item that you already know about, you can get more precise results by telling Summon which part of the record to check. For instance, you can ask it to match a title, author, or ISBN.
If you know the exact title, put it in quotation marks: that way, you’ll get only items with the exact title, not other items that have some of the same words.
If you aren’t exactly sure about the title, but know some of the words, put them without quotation marks:
To search for works by a specific author, use quotation marks and as much of the author’s name as you have. You can put the name in either order:
Summon is not able to distinguish between different people with the same words in their name. For example, there is a present-day scientist named “William C. Shakespeare” who has published a number of articles, and a search for William Shakespeare will bring up them up, in addition to the plays and poems by the more famous William Shakespeare.
However, if the present-day scientist is the one you want, you can get more precise results by including his middle initial:
If you need a specific edition of a specific book, you can search for the ISBN (International Standard Book Number). Note that ISBNs are specific to an edition of a book; for instance, the hardcover, paperback, and e-book of the same title will have different ISBNs.
Students searching a specific ISBN are most often looking for their course textbook. HACC libraries do not necessarily have course textbooks, and when we do, they are usually on reserve for in-library use only. Textbook purchases and rentals (including financial aid) are handled by the bookstore.
A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a number often assigned to scholarly articles available in electronic format.
