How to Use BU Libraries Search
BU Libraries Search is our main search interface, making it a great place to start your research. BU Libraries Search provides access to books, eBooks, scholarly journals, databases, newspapers, music, audio recordings, and more. It also shows what’s available at other locations across campus.
We recommend signing in to your library account to:
- See all possible results
- Request an item
- Save items and search queries to your favorites list
- See your search history
Requesting Materials Beyond BU
No library has everything. If you need an item that is not in our collections, we can help you get it.
- Interlibrary Loan (ILL) services are available to current BU students, staff, and faculty to request books, articles, and other items not available at BU Libraries.
- WorldCat Discovery allows you to search for, identify, and request books from other libraries. Books are generally available 2 – 4 business days after you request them and articles are frequently available electronically within 48 hours.
Learn more about our Interlibrary Borrowing services.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is included in BU Libraries Search?
Material Types
- Books and eBooks
- Journals and Articles
- Music, Audio Recordings, and Scores
- Films and Streaming Video
- Government Documents
- Newspapers and Newspaper Articles
- Book Reviews
- Databases
- Dissertations and Theses
Collections
- Local manuscripts, research, and community contributions from OpenBU
- Digitized archival materials from the BU Digital Library
- Select materials from the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center
- BU authored subject and course guides
- See a complete list of eResource collections available in search
What is not included in BU Libraries Search?
The following resources are not included in BU Libraries Search:
Material Types
- Research Datasets and Statistical Resources
- The Libraries have a guide for how you can interact with these kinds of resources.
- Kits, Worksheets, and Modules
- Materials included with some articles like student worksheets, practicum kits, or teaching modules are not usually available. For help getting access to these materials, please work with your subject librarian.
- Looking for something not listed here?
- BU Libraries Search has a lot of content, but it is not everything. You should always explore when to move beyond the library collections for your research. The Libraries has a guide to help decide how and where to start your search.
Collections
- Due to licensing and copyright reasons, the following databases are not available in BU Libraries Search. To search these resources directly, please access them through our Databases A-Z list.
- ATLA Religion Database
- HeinOnline
- MLA International Bibliography
How do I find a specific item?
Keywords are the fastest way to search the BU Libraries collection. Using a combination of title and author is usually enough to find something if the Libraries already own it. For articles, you can copy the entire citation from the text or a reading list and BU Libraries Search will try and match it to our collections. If not, the results will still contain relevant works that can help narrow or broaden your research scope.
Known Item searching is useful when your keywords are too broad, or when you know the exact title or name of an author:
- Quotation Marks: Use of quotation marks to create a bounded phrase – highlight how it matches to the search results and where it appears in the Full Record. Explain how Global Warming becomes different than “Global Warming.”
- Author Search Index: Use of the drop down to search the authors index specifically, show how you can then browse or facet if you don’t find what you need immediately.
- Title Search Index: Use of the drop down to search the authors index specifically, show how you can then browse or facet if you don’t find what you need immediately.
- Identifier Searching: Use of the drop down and information on which identifiers are available for search in BULS. Indexed identifiers include: Current and cancelled ISBN, ISSN, and ISMN, OCLC Number, and Publisher Number.
How can I find resources for my topic?
Subject/Topic Searches are useful when you are starting your research, or when you are trying to narrow a very broad research topic. Performing these broad based searches will return many results that you can refine using the facets and filters. Libraries also nest subjects within one another, so you may find natural niches in a broad topic by exploring your search results.
If you are not sure where to start your research, the Libraries have guides, such as Getting Started with Research, to help with the process – from choosing a topic, finding keywords, to planning your research schedule.
How can I search for specific words or phrases?
Exact/Phrase Searching allows you to search for words or phrases exactly as typed, with no variation or flexibility. If you have a specific term (like “trauma informed care”) or a specific title (like “The Jungle”), you can wrap the terms in quotation marks. This means you will only see results with your exact phrase as you typed it out.
Use phrase searching when the exact order of words is important, such as with proper nouns, technical terms, or names. This helps you pinpoint specific items and avoid overwhelming results.
Example: Searching for “climate change policy” ensures the results include this exact phrase, rather than separate results for “climate,” “change,” or “policy.”
How can I broaden my search results?
You can combine words in different ways to get better results by using AND, OR, and NOT.
- AND helps narrow your search by making sure all the words you enter appear in the results. For example, searching for climate AND policy will only show books or articles that include both words. This does not mean they have to appear exactly as you typed them, just that both words are in the record returned.
OR expands your search by finding results that include either word. If you search for dogs OR puppies, you will get items that mention either term, giving you more results.
NOT helps remove unwanted topics. For instance, searching for Alzheimer’s NOT Dementia will show results about Alzheimer’s, but excludes results about Dementia.
Wildcards and truncation help when you’re unsure of spelling or want to find different word endings.
- A wildcard, like a question mark (?) or an asterisk (*), replaces a one or more unknown letters. For example, wom?n finds both woman, women, and womyn. Wildcards appear on the interior of a search term to create more flexibility in the results.
- Truncation uses a symbol (often *) to search for all words with the same root. For example, educat* finds education, educator, and educational, and more. Truncation appears on the end of a search term to allow results to include different stems from the same phrase.
How do I search a specific field in a database?
Changing the index from a default keyword search allows you to target specific fields like title, author, or subjects. When you select a specific index, it will ONLY search fields that are available in that index.
For example – the title index will not return results if you are searching by author, and vice versa. Using these skills will help you get more useful results without sorting through unrelated information.
- (Default) Keyword: Searches everything you can see in the record on the webpage.
- Title / Author: Searches only those specific fields with this metadata.
- Subject: Searches Library of Congress subject headings, Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), and subject keywords.
- Identifiers: Searches current and cancelled ISBN, ISSN, and ISMN, OCLC number, and publisher number. You can search for ISBNs and ISSNs online to help speed up your searching.
- Series: If a book has a unique title but is part of an ongoing series, you can search the series title to get all the books. Think about this like a TV show – each episode has a unique title but if you search for the title of the show, you can find all the episodes.