Introducing Encore

With just one click, Encore, the SLU Libraries’ new keyword searching discovery tool, displays results in an easy-to-use faceted format with additional suggestions for finding similar relevant items, tag clouds, recently added materials on your topic and books available through ConnectNY.

Will Encore search the same resources as the traditional catalog?

Yes, it searches the same resources, but in addition searches and provides access to digital resources such as the image collections located in Special Collections in the ODY Library and also at St. Lawrence’s Richard F. Brush Art Gallery. In addition to this material, Encore also searches the core interdisciplinary journal collections available at St. Lawrence.

This powerful keyword search engine also provides simultaneous links to a federated set of databases and resources that go beyond SLU’s local print collections. An Encore search will provide a very good picture of what kinds of resources are available, their history and strengths, and allows the initiation of an integrated Keyword search for articles across the various disciplines.

Once this initial search is completed, however, it will still be necessary for the individual user to explore many of the other discipline specific resources and finding aids that allow more in-depth access and exploration of particular topics. For that, SLU students and faculty may want to visit the SLU Webpage and look for the disciplinary groupings that are available there or make an individual enquiry with a librarian or approach one of our student research assistants at the Help Desk.

Here are some quick search tips for using Encore:
• The terms in the search box are "AND"ed together
• To do a phrase search - enclose the "phrase in quotes"
• To get variant forms, an * at the end of a word (e.g. israel* will search Israel, Israeli, or Israelis)
• To exclude a term - use a minus before the term e.g. -war

And you can also narrow and/or broaden your search in Encore

To narrow your search, see below under "Limits". You may possibly broaden your search by looking in the full record's subject headings or in the tag cloud to identify a phrase that describes your topic more generally. Type this phrase into the search box to perform a comprehensive keyword search of items specifically about that topic.

Limits

• Refining the search by selecting facets in the left column or subjects in the tag cloud (right column) always searches within the current results set.
• At any time, remove a limit by clicking on the red x next to the limit term.

Expands

• By leveraging the tag clouds to allow exploration of similar searches (related searches to expand search)