New One Stop Shopping Research Tool

By Mark Stevens, Systems Librarian

During the summer, a UVU Library committee pursued a one stop shopping research resource to allow searchers to find articles, books, and media simultaneously for all subjects. Dubbed OneSearch, the result has been quietly rolled out as a new link on the Library’s homepage.

We believe that this new tool will provide a general improvement in user friendliness increasing the number of relevant hits for a given search. Full text articles can be located more quickly and easily than through the old methods. A formatted citation (MLA, APA, etc.) can be automatically generated for books and videos in the Library collections (expanding upon the same ability that EBSCO has provided in the past for article citations). Searchers can save sources to folders as well. For those of you who are expert researchers, please rest assured that your favorite databases are still available for specialized research.

You may note that OneSearch’s interface looks similar to a typical EBSCO database and reacts to both Boolean search syntax as well as natural language phrases that a person might enter into Google. Limiters are found on the left of the results page, and search expanders may be found on the right.
We continue fine tuning to the software configuration. We eventually want to have the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) form populated automatically from the database to save users’ time.

As you have feedback, questions, or suggestions, please contact your subject librarian or call the Reference Desk at x8840. Thank you for helping us test this new research tool.