Primo Search is CSU Library's main search tool. It searches across most of what CSU Library provides, including:

• most of the Library's online journal articles and newspaper content
• books, journals, DVDs and other physical items found in the library
• most of the Library's eBooks.

Some hints on using Primo Search:

• It defaults to a keyword search. If you type in speech pathology, it will search for those words separately (ie: speech AND pathology). To search for a specific phrase, use inverted commas - "speech pathology".

• The truncation symbol is the asterisk (*). Typing in diet* will search for diet, diets, dieting, dietician etc.

• When you find a journal article result, click on the Available online link and follow the prompts to get to the full article.

• If you get too many results in a search, try going to Advanced Search and changing your search so that you are searching in the Title or in the Subject (rather than in Any Field).

• Use the refiners on the left of the results screen to narrow your results. There are refiners for things like Resource Type, Dates, and Topics. If you can't see a refiner that you might want, within a list, click on the Show More link at the bottom of the list.

• Use Advanced Search for multiple search lines and extra limiters:

For more videos on Primo Search, go to the Using Primo Search playlist.

Primo Search is useful because:

• You are searching across many resources at once, in the one search
• You will get different types of materials in your results
• You can use the refiners at the left of the results screen to narrow your results in many different ways.

Things to keep in mind when searching in Primo Search:

• You might get too many results
• The search functions are limited compared to other search tools
• Because of the way the searching works, you might get results that aren't very relevant.

[If you find that you are not getting good results from Primo Search, try searching in a database or package of databases.]