Search Options in OneSearch
The OneSearch simple search offers the following options to select from:
- Everything - searches for articles, books, e-books, online encyclopedias, videos, and more.
- Books and Media - searches for physical items available in the library collection such as print books and media (DVDs, audio CDs, music CDs)
- Articles - searches for articles that are available in MCC library databases configured to appear in OneSearch, and articles that are available to access through open access licensing. Content from some library databases does not appear in OneSearch. See the What's in OneSearch?" page to learn more.
- Textbooks - searches for textbooks and other resources your professor has placed on Reserve in the MCC Library for your courses
- SUNY Catalog - searches for physical items available at 61 SUNY campus libraries. To borrow an item from another SUNY campus library, sign into your Library Account and select the Resource Sharing link.
Search Tips
- In a Simple Search you'll receive results that contain all of your search terms. These may match words in a title, author names, subjects, abstract, or other descriptions.
- Advanced Search offers users more features for making your searches more precise. Use the Advanced Search option to pre-limit your search to specific fields, material types, dates, authors, or subjects
- To search for exact phrases or book titles enclose them in quotation marks
Examples:
- "Affordable Care Act"
- "global warming"
- "honey bee communication"
- "Raisin in the Sun"
- The * character can be used as a wildcard in place of one or more characters
Examples:
Typing wom*n searches for items that contain the words woman, women.
Typing cultur* searches for items that contain the words culture, cultural , and culturally.
- To have greater control over your search add operators AND, OR, and NOT between words or phrases:
- To connect two different ideas, use the AND operator (in caps); for example: "affirmative action" AND universities will return items in OneSearch that have the word universities and the words affirmative action directly next to each other in a record.
- To expand a results set, use the OR operator (in caps); for example: marijuana OR cannabis will return items that contain either term. This can be combined with a phrase such as "side effects" OR "health effects". This is how you would enter it in OneSearch:
marijuana OR cannabis AND ("side effects" OR "health effects")
- To exclude items in a results set use the NOT operator (in caps) before a term. For example, cat NOT dog will only return items that do not contain the word "dog".
- Searches can also be nested in parentheses ( ), and combined with quotation marks " " and Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT. For example: "World War II" AND (sites OR battles) NOT (Normandy OR Pearl Harbor).
- ISBNs with or without hyphens can be used to search for titles.
- Refine my results provides numerous options to refine your search results, including by type of resource, subject, date, and more. View the "Refine Results" page for more tips on how to limit your search.
