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Research Guides

LibrarySearch Tips

A guide to the University of Toronto Libraries' LibrarySearch platform

Find Specific Titles

To search for an exact book or article, search with quotations around your title phrase. 

LibrarySearch interface highlighting the title entered with quotations.

If searching with quotations around your title phrase is not successful, try using Advanced Search with the following settings:

  • Select "Title" from the first drop-down menu
  • Choose "Contains exact phrase" from the next drop-down menu
  • Enter your title phrase with or without quotations
  • Select your preferred item format (if you have one)

Search for a Journal or Newspaper by Title

To search for a journal or newspaper by title: 

  • Choose the elipses (...) option from the navigation menu.
  • Select the Journals search tool from the navigation menu just below the LibrarySearch header.
  • Type in the journal or newspaper title and click on the search icon.
  • Click on the title of any result to open a more detailed description of the source.

The following images illustrate each step:

Location of the ellipses in the navigation menu.

Location of Journal search feature underlined in green.

Journal Search interface with the title "International Journal of Civil Engineering" entered in the search box and a circle indicating the location of the magnifying glass search icon

Journal Search results page with journal title underlined

Search Inside a Journal or Newspaper

The Search Inside feature is available for any journal the library subscribes to in a digital format. It is found in the journal record and allows you to search by title or by keyword.  

Item record highlighting Search Inside anchor and search inside section.

The result of this search will appear within the Advanced Search interface, providing additional search options.

To search inside newspapers, use the Newspaper search.

Search by PMID or DOI

LibrarySearch allows researchers to retrieve records by entering unique indentifiers like DOI and PMID. 

A DOI is a unique digital identifier permanently assigned to online journal articles and other publications across all disciplines. PMIDs are unique identifiers assigned to sources indexed in the PubMed database, commonly used in Health Sciences. 

As shown in the following image, add a DOI or PMID to the LibrarySearch box and press the search button.  DOIs can be searched as the unique identifier itself or as a DOI link.

Search with DOI and search button underlined in green.

Or use the Advanced Search interface but be sure to leave the dropdown menu set to All Fields.  

Advanced search with All fields selected from dropdown menu, PMID entered, and search button underlined in green.

 

Barcode Search

LibrarySearch also has a feature to quickly find the item record for a book or other library resources that you have in hand. From the Advanced Search screen, select Barcode Serach and enter the item's barcode.