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Primo Quick Start Guide: Basic Search

Basic Search

You can easily search in Primo. Type one or more words that you are looking for and select the Search button Search Button . If you enter multiple words, Primo returns results that contain all the specified terms.

Basic search

Primo returns results from a broad range of resources, including physical materials like books available at our library, electronic materials that we subscribe to, and select open access collections.

Once you are familiar with the basic Primo search, you can do more with the Search panel or use the Advanced Search option (see  Advanced Search). Both options offer numerous features for making your searches more precise and enable you to get results that are more useful.

Selecting your Search Scope

The search scope is a profile users can choose to search specific items in Primo. You can change the scope of your search by selecting a search scope from the drop-down list, as shown in the following example:

  • Everything search scope searches (nearly) everything the NU Library owns or has access to (both online and in print). Use this search scope when you want to see a wide variety of resources related to your search topic.
  • Library catalogue search scope only searches the physical and some electronic books. Use this search scope when you want only books about your research topic, or when you don't want or require peer-reviewed journal papers.
  • Article and more search scope searches the databases the NU Library subscribes (online resources)
  • Course Reserves search scope searches all materials currently placed on reserve for your courses by your professors.
  • DSPACE search scope only searches the NU repository. 

  • EBSCO search scope only searches within the EBSCO databases that NU Library subscribes to. This scope is only accessible to NU and requires users to sign in with their NU username and password.   

Tips on Searching Primo

Identify your keywords in your assignment or related to your topic.

Before you start searching for information, spend time analysing the question to identify subject words and instruction words. Subject words or keywords are the main ideas or concepts in your topic you will use when searching Primo or specific databases. 

  1. Identify the essential words and phrases.
  2. Think of synonyms and closely related words for the keywords you just picked
  3. Build your search string using operators like AND, OR, and NOT. Check for additional information on how to utilize operators in the other tabs.

You can do more than just a simple search with the search box by placing the following operators between words or phrases: AND, OR, and NOT. Searches with multiple operators are processed in the following order, from left to right:

  1. ( ) – Parentheses allow you to group search terms and alter the order of precedence

  2. AND and NOT – left-to-right precedence is used in case of multiple operators.

  3. OR – left-to-right precedence is used in case of multiple operators.

When using operators to search, the full search string is not considered as a phrase anymore. As an example, these two queries may seem the same, but they are actually treated differently:

  • honey bee communication – Primo treats the entire query as a phrase and returns results in which all of the words may be closer together.
  • honey bee AND communication – Primo treats honey bee and communication as separate phrases and returns results in which both phrases may not be as close together.

Note:

  • Primo assumes that you are searching for all of the words unless you type OR or NOT between words and phrases.
  • For right-to-left languages (such as Hebrew), the precedence is right-to-left.
  • Searches are not case-sensitive.

Read more: How Can I Do More with the Search Panel?

To search for an exact phrase, type quotation marks around the phrase. You can combine both words and phrases in your search.

For example, to search for global warming as one term, type the following in the search box:

example search with quotation marks around the phrase

Note:

  • To ensure accurate search results, it's important to enclose a phrase in quotation marks. Without them, the system may retrieve items containing the individual words, regardless of their order or proximity to each other.

  • Remember to always add a space after a comma when separating words in a list. Otherwise, the system may not recognize the words correctly and you may get fewer results than you were expecting.

You can search for items that contain at least one of the words or phrases you type in the Search box. To do so, type OR between the words or phrases.

For example, to search for items with the word Irish or the word Celtic, type the following in the search box:

example search with OR

Note:

  • If you search for words or phrases without specifying OR or NOT, Primo assumes that you are searching for all the specified words or phrases.
  • To use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) within search phrases, you must enter them in uppercase letters. Otherwise, Primo removes them and performs a simple search that includes all search phrases.

You can exclude items that contain specific words or phrases. To do so, type NOT and then type the word or phrase to exclude.

For example, to search for items with the word Celtic and exclude any of these items with the word Irish, type the following in the search box:

example search with NOT

Note:

  • If you search for words or phrases without specifying OR or NOT, Primo assumes that you are searching for all of the specified words or phrases.
  • If parentheses are not used for a query that contains multiple operators, it is recommended that you use the NOT operator last to ensure that results are excluded from the entire query. For example: cycling AND safety NOT helmet. If it is necessary to place the NOT operator elsewhere, make sure that you enclose the operation with parentheses. For example: (cycling NOT safety) OR helmet.

You can include the following wildcard characters in your searches:

  • ? – enter a question mark to perform a single-character wildcard search. For example, type wom?n to search for records that contain the strings woman, women, and so forth.

  • * – enter an asterisk to perform a multiple-character wildcard search. For example, type cultur* to search for records that contain strings, such as culture, cultural, and culturally.

You can use parentheses to group terms to clarify the order of multiple operators specified in a query.

Example 1: The following query searches for records that contain Shakespeare and either tragedy or sonnet:

example search with parentheses - Shakespeare AND (tragedy or sonnet)

When using more than one operator, it is strongly recommended to use parentheses to clarify precedence. For example, if no parentheses are specified in the above query, Primo will apply the precedence rules (left-to-right: parentheses, AND and NOT, then OR) and instead group the words Shakespeare and tragedy as follows:

example search with parentheses - (Shakespeare AND tragedy) or sonnet

Example 2: The following query searches for records that contain either Irish or Celtic and do not contain Gaelic:

example search with parentheses - (Irish OR Celtic) NOT Gaelic

If no parentheses are specified in the above query, Primo will apply the precedence rules and instead group the words Celtic and Gaelic as follows:

example search with parentheses - Irish OR (Celtic NOT Gaelic)

At this moment Primo doesn't recognize the special characters in Russian or Kazakh languages (й, ғ, қ etc.)). While we are forking on teh improvements please replace with the normal letters (и, к, г etc.).

At this moment Primo doesn't recognize the special characters in Russian or Kazakh languages (й, ғ, қ etc.)). While we are forking on teh improvements please replace with the normal letters (и, к, г etc.).

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