In Omni, the number and type of items you find depends on where you search. The three search types are Course Reserves,York Libraries and York Libraries + Omni Libraries.
ther 15 Omni libraries. Facets are search filters to help sort and narrow your search.
Search results can be focused by using facets or filters under the "Modify Your Results" left hand menu.
Sort by
Results are automatically sorted by relevance:
If you sort by the newest date, you lose the relevance ranking.
Availability
"Available online" limits results to electronic resources.
"Peer-reviewed Journals" limits to articles that appear in peer-reviewed journals.
"Open Access" limits results to content is freely available whether or not you are logged in using your Passport York sign-on. It may also be peer-reviewed.
"Available in York Libraries" means items held at YUL and includes books, videos...
Resource Types
Resource types are listed by frequencies and include:
Hover your cursor over the resource types and click to choose one resource type or move the cursor to the left of the list and check the box(es) to reduce your results to several resource types.
Searching in Omni is not difficult. Let's start with a fairly simple search. Let's use a famous Canadian-American to understand the power of an Omni search.
If you wanted to write a paper on Gord Downie, singer, songwriter, composer, educator and activist, you will have a wide range of resources to choose from. Here are some possibilities:
Omni will find many items. Type "Gord Downie" in the search bar. Don't forget to put the name in quotation marks so it searches it like a phrase. You can choose the Search Scope. Perhaps start with York Libraries first to see what YUL has and then broaden the scope to York Libraries + Omni Libraries if needed.
There are more than 500 results. To get specific resources, such as those required in an assignment, you will need to learn about filtering results with Facets. Take a look at the Facets box so you can power up your search in Omni.