Special Collections Research Strategies

Libraries Search, accessible through this link, is an excellent way to search through SCRC’s printed materials such as books, journal articles, certain archival materials, and other resources in the Syracuse University Libraries' general collections.

Another way to access the Libraries Search is by starting on the SU Libraries website.

From there, you can perform a basic search by entering keywords into the library’s search bar. This allows you to search the entire libraries catalog (including secondary sources).

For more precise search options, press the Advanced Search button in the top right-hand corner. That will take you directly to the SCRC Libraries Search advanced search engine.

You'll see the search engine below:

As part of your advanced search, you can limit your search results to materials available at SCRC (circled in red).

On the right-hand side of the search box, you can also limit your search to specific types of materials, languages, and creation/publication date ranges (Start date and End date).

Note that limiting your search results to resource type "Archival Material / Manuscripts" may exclude print, maps, audio, video, etc. materials held by the SCRC.

The Advanced Search has several options for refining your inquiries. When beginning your search, you can choose the specific Search Fields you want to search within, such as title, series, author/creator, subject, etc. This is coupled with the the following drop-down options: contains, contains exact phrase, starts with, and equals exact phrase.

There is also a Boolean filter, which gives you the options of “AND” and “OR” as well as the same options as above for a second possible search term.

Lastly, there is also an option to Add a New Line below the search bars to add more search terms into your search.

Here is an example of an advanced search using these features:

[Title] [starts with] American [AND] [Author/Creator] [contains] Langston Hughes.

Once you have chosen your search fields, click Search and you should get a page like this with all of your search results.

You can also continue to refine your search after receiving your initial search results. Above, the possible refinements--called facets--are outlined in red. Click the down arrow next to each facet type to see the available options. Note that the number of items and collections available appears next to each facet.

Here are just a few of those filters to note:

• Sort By: This option helps you sort your results based on relevance, creation date, author, or title
• Resource Type: Gives you types of resources similarly to the filters from the search bar and includes many media types as well.
• Dates: This filter allows you to search within a specific time frame
• Subjects: This filter is especially useful for narrowing your results to specific subtopics related to your search. For example, if you were looking for fictional books by Langston Hughes, you could choose the subject “African American Fiction” to refine your results.
• Author/Creator: This is also a great filter to narrow your results based on authors or creators you are looking for.

To look at the details for a particular item, click the title of the printed material and it will take you to more details such as its Availability within the collection and Details on its title, creator, creation date, etc.

Note: For more details on all aspects of the Libraries Search website and secondary source searching for all SU Libraries, please visit the Libraries Search Information website.