Summon users
Summon a great place to start your research by discovering the breadth of your library:
Source: Proquest Summon
What is being searched?
Starting your research in Summon is great because materials from throughout the library are being searched from the single search box.
A search on cat dog fish will retrieve items that contain all three words in the citation and/or in the full text of the item.
Running a search
Searching is as easy as Search - Refine - Get...
Refining your search to get the best material for your research can also be done by adding more keywords to your search.
Just like searching the open web, you can indicate a phrase by putting quotation marks around the words. The query "teacher education" will find results with that phrase.
Wanting to do a more targeted search?
Moving over to the Advanced Search page lets you be more specific with your search. For example, you can tell Summon to look for the author "Sally Smith", so you can focus your search on materials by "Sally Smith" rather than about "Sally Smith".
Click on the down arrow next to the right of the keyword search box to go to Advanced Search.
Source: Proquest Summon
Search Query Help
Phrase Searching
Summon™ allows for phrase searching with the use of “ ”. The query “teacher education” will find results with that phrase.
Searching Specific Fields
The single search box in Summon™ (basic search box or keyword search box in advanced search) will search across many fields automatically. For example, entering an ISBN, ISSN, or Call Number will bring back associated records.
You can explicitly search a field using the syntax: “field:(query).” For example, the search ISSN:(1234-5678), finds records that contain that value in the ISSN field.
Searchable fields:
Boolean Operators
Summon™ offers the following Boolean operations: OR, NOT and AND. The operators must be written in ALL CAPS.
By default, all terms in a search are combined with the AND operator. To expand the results set, use the OR operator “microcircuits OR nanocircuits” will return items that contain either term.
This can be combined with quoted terms such as “teacher education” OR “educator training”.
To exclude items in Summon™, use the NOT operator or “-” character before a term. When used in the following query “animal NOT dog” the results will not include the term “dog”.
Wildcard Use in Summon
Searches within Summon™ can be performed using the wildcards “?” and “*”.
The question mark (?) will match any one character and can be used to find “Olsen” or “Olson” by searching for “Ols?n”.
The asterisk (*) will match zero or more characters within a word or at the end of a word. A search for “Ch*ter” would match “Charter”, “Character”, and “Chapter”. When used at the end of a word, such as “Temp*”, it will match all suffixes “Temptation”, “Temple” and “Temporary”.
Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search.
Browser Support
Summon™ supports the following browsers and phones:
Source: Summon
About the video
This video will explain the basics of searching for:
Source: Proquest Summon
About the video
Summon service contains billions of citations, and when you do a search in the basic Summon search box, you may get more results than you can easily work with. This video will explain advanced searching:
Source: Proquest Summon