About Quick Search

How to use Quick Search

"Quick Search" is a federated search engine for searching across many of the Library's electronic resources from one simple interface. Quick Search provides citations and abstracts, as well as linking to full-text articles, electronic books, and records held by the Argosy University Library.

"Quick Search" can be a good place to begin, or to discover resources you might not find using individual databases. However, for more in-depth research, using an individual database, such as PsycINFO, ERIC, or ProQuest Complete, provides more search options, tools, and subject specific limiters that enable you to refine your search more effectively than it's possible with the "Quick Search" tool.

As always, ask a librarian for advice at any point in your research process.

Getting Started

Use the Basic search page to simply enter what you're searching for and get results.

Use the Advanced search page for expanded searching options like a search type menu, the Year Search Limiter to enter a specific date, and advanced Boolean searching.

Try using Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT) to find what you're looking for. Phrase searching works too! Put "quotation marks" around your search phrase to return more precise results.

With both the Basic and Advanced search options, you can choose specific resources to search. If you already know which resources you want to search, click on "Search by database" to choose from a list of available resources.

If you aren't sure where to begin but you know what subject area(s) you are interested in researching, chose a subject category in "Search by subject."

Search Results

As Quick Search gathers your search results, you will see the resources at work. Within seconds, databases return results, and the search page will present live updates.

You will see which resources have returned results first, and you can click on the number to view the results as the remaining databases continue searching.

Use Results by Source to filter your search results to show only those from specific databases or providers. The number of results for each database and provider is shown in parentheses next to each resource. Click on the results number to view a particular resource's results.

Clustered Results

Clustered results sort your Quick Search results into categories, to help save you time in deciding which results are most appropriate for your purposes. Clustering can also help you refine your search, by giving you new ideas for your search query.

Sort Options

All of your options for sorting and filtering your search results are located in the header above your results:

Sort Results by: These links allow you to sort your search results by publication date, title, author, or source. If your results contain publication dates, they will be automatically sorted by date unless you choose another sort option.
Filter by: Use these checkboxes to filter your results down to full-text content (meaning they link to the entire content of the item), or to peer-reviewed content, or to both.

New or Refined Search

At the top of the page, above your clustered results, are your "Refine Search" and "New Search" links.

Refine Search: This takes you back to your original search query where you can edit and run the search again.
New Search: This takes you to a fresh search page to start a new query.

Next Results

To get results to you as quickly as possible, results are returned in small batches. When you reach your final page of results you can click on the "Next Results" link to see the next batch of results from the providers.

You will be taken to the next page of results. The new set will be automatically appended to the original results set. Use the "merge" icon if you prefer to combine all results into one list. This sorts the list according to your selected sorting method -- by default, Date.

Deduplication

When a search finds duplicate results, you will see a "Duplicate Records" link. Only one record will be shown with a link to the others. When you click on the Duplicate Records link, you will see a new page with all of the duplicate results listed.

Export, Save

Above your results are links to export, or save selected results. To select records, use the checkboxes next to each result. Once results are selected, "Export/Save" links are activated.

Clicking on "selected records" link from the results page allows you to view only your selections in a new window.

Clicking on "Export/Save" prompts you to fill out a similar form. You may choose to export your selected records directly to RefWorks, or to save the records either in a format compatible with bibliographic citation managers like refWorks, EndNote or ProCite, as plain text, or as HTML.

Still Need Help? We're happy to help. Please call 312 -777- 7651 or e-mail: fkallista@argosy.edu