The Basic Search function allows you to locate materials by entering any word or phrase. It can be accessed from the library website homepage or on its own dedicated landing page or the top of your results screen.
Conduct a basic search from the library website homepage:
Conduct a search from the basic search landing page:
Choose the option that best reflects your research or information needs.
Everything: Most searches start by using the everything search. If you want to see results that include book chapters and articles, you need to choose this option.
Catalogue: This option works best if you are searching for physical materials in a library, full ebooks, ejournals, or streaming media, but note, while this option gives you more tools to refine your results, it does not include journal articles or book chapters.
Course Reserves: This option limits search results to those chosen by course instructors to use for teaching.
You can focus your search on a specific U of T library using either the library pre-filter or library filter in the search results.
Using the library pre-filter (located next to the search bar) retrieves results from your selected library along with all online resources.
Using the library filter (in the search results side bar) limits your results to only items available at that specific library, excluding online resources.
The search you enter can be very simple, without using any expert techniques.
If you are a more experienced researcher, Basic Search also allows you to use search operators that broaden or narrow your results.
Search operators are a set of commands that can be used in almost every search engine, database, or online catalogue such as AND, OR, and NOT. These must be in capital letters to work. Other operators include parentheses, truncation, and phrases.
For more ways to narrow your search, use the Advanced Search function.
