About Library Search

Library Search is an academic search engine that provides relevancy ranked results through a single search box. It includes content from across the library’s collections.

You can:

• find results on any topic
• filters your results based on subject terms, date of publication, and more
• limit your results to formats you are interested in such as:
  
  • eBooks
  • Print books
  • Journal articles
  • eJournals
  • DVDs
  • Dissertations/theses

How it works

Library Search runs on software called Summon.

Summon combines data from our local library catalogue and from its own central discovery index. The local library catalogue holds metadata about the content we have purchased or subscribed to at a whole work level.

The Summon central index contains billions of metadata records for articles, chapters, reports, book reviews and proceedings that are contained within the purchased or subscribed content that the library has access to.

Using these two sources Library Search can offer search results at the article or chapter level from across the content purchased and subscribed to by the library.

Databases not indexed in Library Search

Although all databases are indexed in Library Search by name, the individual articles within databases may not be. The main databases that are not fully indexed at article level are:

• Compendex
• Embase
• Euromonitor Passport 
• International Medieval Bibliography
• Library of Latin Texts
• SciFinder
• Westlaw

Please note that some of the content contained in these services will be discoverable in Library Search if it has been indexed in an abstracting service such as Scopus or Web of Science but it should not be considered comprehensive.

Things to remember

We advise you to tailor your choice of search tool to the situation. When researching essays and background reading, Library Search will provide a wide choice across most subjects. However if you are conducting an in-depth systematic review on a particular subject, Library Search may not contain all of the material you want. Therefore it is advisable to search other databases directly as well. It is particularly worth noting:

• If you require up to date “online first” articles it is best to access the journal directly and register for alerts. Online first material does not appear in Library Search until it is officially published
• Due to the way that metadata is supplied and aggregated for Library Search, you may find that more advanced search functionality is available directly on individual database interfaces
• Classic Catalogue remains available alongside Library Search. Use Classic when you want to browse lists of resources by classmark, title, author, subject, and ISBN. Library Search does not have the functionality to provide these browse searches
• Updates from the library catalogue to Library Search will take 3-5 days to be visible. This is due to the indexing and merging processes required behind the scenes. If a record in Library Search is missing information or a link to content try clicking “View in Classic Catalogue” from the detail page

Accessibility

Library Search (Summon) is continually designed and developed to meet Level AA of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1). For more details please view the Summon Accessibility Statement.

If you need help using Library Search or accessing any library content please contact us [email:library@warwick.ac.uk].