Essential Library Information for Off Campus & Online Students: Search FindIt

Begin at the FindIT search box on the library homepage

Enter your keywords or phrase, then press ENTER

Before the search results will appear you will need to enter your Melbourne Polytechnic username and password.

Review your results list by looking for relevance in the items you've found.

• Check titles: are they what your need?
• Check subjects: do they match the information you hope to find?
• Check publication information: is it recent enough for you?
• Check the size of the results list: is it too large?

Also check the formats of the items in your list: are there books, academic articles, or other types of publications? Are they suitable for your purpose?

If you decide that the contents of your search results list meets your needs, start selecting individual items from the list.
However, if you are not satisfied with the quality or usefulness of items in your search results list, try the strategies on the Refine Results page.

There are numerous techniques that you might employ to refine your list of search results.  These include:

• Reviewing your chosen keywords:  are there other ways of expressing, in words, what you are searching for?
• Limiting the date-range of your results:  perhaps you might look for articles published within the past five years, or so?
• Limiting to publication type:  consider if there is a specific publication type that will benefit you - book, journal, report?
• Do you know of any important authors in your subject?  Ask around ... find out, then search for works written by this person.

These, and other techniques for refining your FindIt search can be found on the Refine Results page of the FindIt library guide.

The Folder enables you to print, email or save details for any of the items listed in your search results. 

The Folder sits in the blue toolbar in the top right side of the search results screen. You will need to be logged in with a My Ebsco account to use this feature.

Notice that to the right of each entry in your search result list is a blue folder icon (with a + sign on it).  Select this icon each time you wish to add an individual search result to the folder in the toolbar at top of screen.

For more information on managing results saved in folder, go to the Manage Your Results page of the FindIt library guide.