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Omni - Library Discovery Search

Omni replaces Summon as our public-facing discovery layer for navigating physical and electronic resources from OCAD U Library and beyond! This guide will cover everything you need to know to get started and make the most of Omni.

Advanced Search

This page will outline advanced search features to help you make the most of what Omni can do. Remember to login to Omni to make full use of its features

Field Searching

The Advanced search screen defaults to "Any field." This is a keyword search, meaning that the words you enter here can be retrieved in any part of the description of an item (e.g. title, author, subject, ISBN, table of contents). If you would like to find a specific title, you can change this to "Title." If you know the author you are seeking, change the default to "Author/creator," and so on, using all of the options as needed. 

For example, if you are searching for the title The Handmaid's Tale, change "Any field" to title and enter the title without the word 'The'. Never search by the initial article of a title (The, An, A).

If you want to see all works written by Margaret Atwood instead of just The Handmaid's Tale, change "Any field" to "Author/creator" and enter the author's name. Example: Atwood, Margaret

Further Customization

Omni allows for even more customization of your search through the combination of different search words. Beneath the "Any Field" default, you will notice the default word AND.

This default can remain as is, or  you can change it to OR and NOT. These connector words instruct the search engine to seek relationships between search terms. So, for example, if you want to find The Testaments, but after searching you realize there are too many books with that title, you could add AND Author/creator Atwood, Margaret to your search, so that your search would look like this:

Screen cap of example search in OmniUsing the OR connector is most useful when you are looking for synonymous or highly related concepts such as 

"Science fiction" OR "dystopian fiction" 

Using the NOT connector is useful when you are trying to limit your results by eliminating a word or set of words. For example:

"Science fiction" NOT film* 

This avoids results that contain discussions of films.

This page was adapted with permission from Bibliothèque de l’université d’Ottawa | University of Ottawa Library