Discovery: NYU Law Library's New Catalog Features

1. If you are searching for a known title, try going to the Advanced Search menu and toggle the search box drop-down from "All Fields" to "Title." For a shortcut, you can type TI before the title in the basic search box and submit. For example, type TI United States Reports.
    
2. Discovery automatically retrieves some relevant results that may not strictly match your search terms. For example, if your query contains the word "contract", Discovery will also retrieve matches for "contracts".
    
3. Do not rely on abbreviated forms of names/titles when searching. For example, you should search for "New York University" instead of, or in addition to, the shortened form "NYU."
    
4. If you don't want your search results to include individual articles from journals, choose "Catalog Only" from the "All Filters" button located beneath the search box. This will retrieve the same results you would find in the classic view of the catalog (Julius).
    
5. In most cases, adding quotation marks to your search terms is not necessary. However, if you are searching for an exact keyword phrase and aren't getting the results you expect, try putting quotation marks around your query. This will prompt Discovery to return a more exact match. For example, type "contract law" instead of contract law.
    
6. By default, Discovery's general search box will search inside the actual full text of online resources as well as the catalog records. The advantage of this is that it helps you find a larger range of relevant results. If you want to turn off full text searching or limit your search by title, subject, author, etc., exclude it from the "All filters" button or uncheck it on the Advanced Search interface.

Boolean search connectors

You can also used special characters or advanced search terms to create connections between keywords in your search -- whether you want a very broad or a very narrow set of results. The standard search connectors are: AND, OR, and NOT.

You can also use parentheses to nest multiple search terms/phrases:

• Example : (alaska OR canada) AND (adventure NOT vacation)

For more details, you can contact us at the library or review the documentation on Discovery's parent company website, EBSCO: Searching with Boolean Operators (EBSCO)

Proximity search connectors

You can also do a proximity search for two or more words that occur within a certain number of words from each other. The proximity operators are composed of a letter ("N" for near, or "W" for within) and a number specifying the number of surrounding words you want the system to look at. This can be useful when you are browsing for results on concepts that might be referred to in slightly different phrasing, such as "tax reform" versus "reform of laws on tax".

Please note that Discovery's default settings already include some proximity searching, so it is not necessary to use proximity search connectors unless you are pursuing a very specific query. EBSCO has a detailed article on how you can use the N and W terms if you'd like to learn more: How do I create a proximity search? (EBSCO). An excerpted example follows.

The proximity operator is placed between the words that are to be searched, as follows:

• Near Operator (N): N5 finds the words if they are a maximum of five words apart from one another, regardless of the order in which they appear. For example, type tax N5 reform to find results that have a maximum of five words between the beginning and ending terms, that would match tax reform as well as tax that has been submitted for reform.

• Within Operator (W): W8 finds the words if they are within eight words of one another, in the order in which you entered them. For example, type tax W8 reform to find results that would match tax reform but would not match reform of income tax.