Subject Guides

First-Year Writing

Guide Contents

Find It! Search

Find It! Tutorial

Use the link to the tutorial below to learn more about Find It! on your own,

Find It! Instructions

You can use Find It! to search for books and articles in the same place. Find It! is also a helpful resource when you're not sure what database to use because it searches through almost all of our databases at once!

Using Find It!

Find It! is on the front of the Libraries' website in the middle of the page.

Find It! search box on Libraries' website

Searching

The search defaults to everything (books, ebooks, journal articles, magazines, blogs, video, film, etc.). You can enter one or several keywords to start your search.

Search results screen in Find It!

Narrowing your search

On this screen you can limit your search using the tools on the left hand side of the screen. Under Availability you can select Peer-reviewed Journals to find Peer-reviewed Articles. You can also look for current content by opening up publication date and changing the years of publication. Make sure to click "Refine" to change your results.

Publication date filter

Using Subject Terms can help you be more specific about what you are searching for. Subject Terms are the specialized set of vocabulary used by authors, publishers, and researchers. Using their language can help you find what you are looking for quickly!

List of subject terms

You can click on a subject term to add it or remove it from your search OR type a subject term into the search box at the top of the page.

Use these instructions to search Find It! from the widget on this page.

Find It! Advanced Search

Using the Advanced Search in Find It!

Like most databases you can use the Advanced Search in Find It! to connect your keywords using AND, OR, and NOT. Access the Advanced Search from the Libraries' homepage. There is a link to it on the lower right hand corner of the search box, click on Advanced to open the dropdown menu and then click on Advanced Search.

Advanced Search appears under the Find It! search box on the Libraries' homepage

AND, OR, and NOT

In the Advanced search screen you can connect your keywords using AND, OR, and NOT. Simply click on the dropdown for AND to change it to OR or NOT. Find more information on using AND, OR, and NOT below.

Advanced search screen in Find It!

 

Boolean Operators

AND

  • Useful for narrowing your results (because all search terms must be present in the resulting records).
  • Ex: bridges AND history AND civil engineering (the black triangle in the middle of the Venn diagram below represents the result set for this search).
  • Note: Most search engines and databases will assume your search terms are connected with AND.
     

OR

  • Useful for broadening your results (because search results may contain either or both search terms).
  • Ex: university OR college OR higher education (the entire Venn diagram below represents the result set for this search).
  • Note: OR is especially useful if your search terms have synonyms.
     

NOT

  • Excludes results with whichever search term follows it.
  • Ex: mercury NOT planet (the dark green section in the Venn diagram represents the result set for this search).
  • Note: The order of your search terms matters when using NOT (results with the second search term will be excluded).

     

Venn diagram shows a search for bridges AND history AND civil engineering will narrow down search results to a small section that includes all of these keywords          Venn diagram shows a search for university OR higher education OR college will broaden a search by bringing back results with any of these keywords           Venn diagram shows a search for Mercury NOT planet will narrow a search by returning results only for the Mercury keyword and exclude results with the keyword planet