SUMMON : The Federated Search Engine of MSU-IIT

Great news!

You can now access SUMMON, a federated search engine! Both ProQuest and eBrary can now be accessed using one platform.

You can also use SUMMON outside the campus without the need for username and password.

http://msuiit.summon.serialssolutions.com/

How to Use the Search Engine:

Phrase Searching

Summon™ allows for phrase searching with the use of “ ”. The query “teacher education” will find results with that phrase.

Searching Specific Fields

The single search box in Summon™ (basic search box or keyword search box in advanced search) will search across many fields automatically. For example, entering an ISBN, ISSN, or Call Number will bring back associated records.

You can explicitly search a field using the syntax: “field:(query).” For example, the search ISSN:(1234-5678), finds records that contain that value in the ISSN field.

Searchable fields:

• Title
• SubjectTerms
• Author
• Publisher
• PublicationTitle
• Volume
• Issue
• Language
• Notes
• ISBN
• ISSN
• DOI
• DEWEY

Boolean Operators

Summon™ offers the following Boolean operations: OR, NOT and AND. The operators must be written in ALL CAPS.

By default, all terms in a search are combined with the AND operator. To expand the results set, use the OR operator “microcircuits OR nanocircuits” will return items that contain either term.

This can be combined with quoted terms such as “teacher education” OR “educator training”.

To exclude items in Summon™, use the NOT operator or “-” character before a term. When used in the following query “animal NOT dog” the results will not include the term “dog”.

Wildcard Use in Summon

Searches within Summon™ can be performed using the wildcards “?” and “*”.

The question mark (?) will match any one character and can be used to find “Olsen” or “Olson” by searching for “Ols?n”.

The asterisk (*) will match zero or more characters within a word or at the end of a word. A search for “Ch*ter” would match “Charter”, “Character”, and “Chapter”. When used at the end of a word, such as “Temp*”, it will match all suffixes “Temptation”, “Temple” and “Temporary”.

Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search.

Browser Support

Summon™ supports the following browsers and phones:

• Internet Explorer 6.0+
• Firefox 3.6.0+
• Safari 4.0+
• Chrome (stable version)
• iPhone 2.0+
• BlackBerry 8500+
• Android 1.0+