Using Advanced Search
The Advanced Search option in Primo offers many features for making your searches more accurate. It can also aid in getting results that are more relevant and useful.
The Advanced Search looks like the image below, and features the following options:
- Search For
- Allows you to search within a specific category of materials ( as displayed in the Search For line). The default is Everything.
- Field selector
- This search filter allows you to narrow the search to all search fields or a particular field (such as title, author, or subject). Each line can be a new parameter to create a combined search.
- Search type
- – For each search line, this parameter indicates how your search terms are compared against the search field. The drop down menu gives you the following options:
- contains - Returns results that contain all words in the phrase, but the words may be in a different order and may not be as close together.
- as a phrase - Returns results that contain phrases that exactly match the phrases specified in the query
- starts with – Returns results that contain words that start with the specified string. This type performs left-anchored title searches only. When performing a Title search, it is recommended that you do not omit any leading articles from the title. For example, The Oxford Handbook is preferred to Oxford Handbook.
- Boolean Operators –
- As with basic searches, you can include the AND, OR, and NOT operators between words and phrases in each search line. In addition, the Operator drop-down list allows you to select the operation that is used between search lines.
- Add a New Line
- – Advanced searches allow you to include a maximum of seven search criteria lines
- Resource Types
- Drop down box displays the following that can be used as a filter with the advanced search:
- All Items
- eJournals
- eBooks
- Journal Articles
- Images
- Audio
- eVideos
- Theses
- Language
- Primo brings in results in a range of languages. We can use this advanced search option to set the language as only English to rule out all other languages.
- Start/end dates
- Allows for filtering of results by specific dates not just year. For example, I know the article was published around May 2024; I could add the start date as April 1 and the end date as June 30 to capture all around the approximate time of the year.
