Searching ebrary

There are a lot of very useful resources in ebrary's Academic Complete collection. They have nearly 70,000 full-text items in 20 subject areas, 288 listed under the subject of nursing. They also have dictionaries, math and science books, history, law, and so on. With so many books it is absolutely necessary to master their search engine. Let's take a look at how it works.

Simple search box with the advanced option top right.

If you use the simple search box on the main page it will search the text of the books. This can get you too many results. Try looking up the word "Pheromones" and you get 829 documents. To find out where the word pops up in each document, go to the Chapter Results tab at the top.

Click to see larger image.

You'll be taken to a page where each book is listed along the chapter that your word appeared most. These results are ranked by how often there was a hit on your search term in the book.

You can click on the chapter you want to look at.

Click on an item and you'll be taken to that chapter in the book. All instances of your word will be highlighted. The little bar next to each chapter shows how many times your term appeared there. Click on the magnifying glass to be taken to the first hit in each chapter.

This is only partially helpful. There 76 references but you can only go to the first one. You have to page through the chapter for the rest.

Let's go to the advanced search for more control over our results.

You start off with one search field box. It's automatically set to "Text and Key Fields". This means it will search every word in both the text and the metadata, like title, subject, etc. Change that first box to something useful, like Subject, and enter your search term. Add another box by clicking the plus (+) sign next to the first.

Choose a second metadata field, like Publication Date. I've chosen Subject: Nursing and Publication Date: 2005-2099, because for some reason it's set to search decades into the future. That would be a lot more impressive if it actually found something. Hit the search button and you'll find far fewer results than with a simple search. Well, not with my search. I would suggest also adding a Text and Key Fields box to look up a particular word or topic you're interested in. Also, there are further subjects suggested over your search results. You can click on one of the radial buttons and hit search and it will narrow your search down by that field.

Creating a new search is a little harder as ebrary doesn't seem to have a  button to let you clear your last search. To start over you have to clear out your old search yourself. Press the little minus (-) buttons next to the search fields to take the extra ones away and then erase whatever you have typed in the remaining one.

You can also browse the books by subject. The "All Subjects" link is next to "Advanced Search". This will take you to a page with links for 20 subjects.  Once you've clicked on a subject you can see all the books listed under it. You will also be given further choices under that subject to narrow your focus. Again, your search won't clear automatically and if you click on "All Subjects" again you will be taken to whatever subject you were last looking at rather than the page listing all of them. Above the subject headings but below the "Title Results" tab are listed the categories you are currently looking at. To get to the main list of subjects again, click "Top".