The UBC Library website is a great place to start your search. On the home page, you'll find three main tools you can use to find sources: Summon, the Library's search engine; the Books and Media tab; and the Indexes and Database tab. In this module, we will focus on searching in Summon, but we'll introduce the other tools as well.
Vocabulary
Database
Summon
1. Summon
Summon is the library's search and discovery tool. It searches most of UBC's collection (Vancouver and Okanagan) and is a great place to get started with finding academic/scholarly sources.
The main thing to remember with Summon is that it searches and returns results that are both scholarly and popular, so you'll need to make sure you limit your results to peer-reviewed sources if required.
The image below shows the search box on the library home page. An arrow points to the first tab, labeled General, which displays a search bar. This is your main starting point to search the library's resources.
2. Books and Media
You may not be as likely to use the Books and Media tab, but unsurprisingly, it is where you can search for books (print and electronic) and media such as films. The Books and Media tab feed results into Summon as well, so when you are searching in Summon you are getting book results, including single chapters.
One advantage of using the Books and Media tab is that it allows you to limit the search results to books that are only in selected library branches and/or online.
In the image below from the Library homepage, an arrow points to the second tab, labeled Books and Media.
3. Indexes and Databases
An index or database is a list of published articles within a discipline or topic. This tab searches our list of indexes and databases.The keywords you put in this search box will only find the titles or descriptions of databases. So, you won't find articles using the search box, you'll find databases in which you can then search for articles.
How to find and search in databases is covered in the Finding Sources - Advanced module. For now, just be aware that whatever subject you choose to study will have one or more, even many, databases for you to search discipline-specific content.
In the image below of the Library homepage, an arrow points to the third tab, labeled Indexes and Databases.
Activity
These are the three most important tabs for basic searching. Next, you'll learn how to build a search in Summon.
Download Finding Sources Basics Worksheet (Word Document)