The Library catalogue is a single platform that provides access to the University’s print and online collections. It’s the best place to find information for assignments and recommended readings from your lecturer.
Use the Library catalogue for:
- simple keyword searches
- advanced searches that achieve more targeted results.
For optimal results, search subject-specific databases in addition to using the Library catalogue.
Sign in to your Library account before you start searching to:
- access results that are only available to Sydney staff and students
- request items from other campuses, or not held at University of Sydney
- manage loans and requests
- save searches and set up alerts when new content is published.
Collections
The Library catalogue provides access to almost a billion:
- books
- journal articles
- theses
- videos
- Open Access resources and more.
How to search the Library catalogue
Simple Search
Simple Search is easy to do:
- Enter one or more words in the search bar.
- Click “Search”.
Advanced Search
Advanced Search gives you a range of options to incorporate into your search strategy to achieve more targeted results.
Advanced Search Criteria
Filter your search with the following criteria:
- Our library or Our library + other institutions
- Any field – click the dropdown menu to specify if your search words or phrases should appear in the:
- Title
- Author/Creator
- Subject
- Call number
- ISSN
- ISBN
- Material type
- Language
- Publication date
Advanced Search tips
Boolean operators
Boolean operators are words and symbols, such as AND, OR and NOT, that can be used alongside keywords to limit or expand search results.
- AND (both) – limit your results by adding more terms which must appear in every item (e.g. britain AND monarchy).
- OR (either) – expand your results by combining synonyms with OR (e.g. britain OR “united kingdom”).
- NOT – exclude words that produce irrelevant results (e.g. web NOT spider).
Wildcards
Use wildcards (? or *) if you are unsure of spelling or want to include more than one variation.
- ? replaces a single character (e.g., wom?n finds woman, women).
- * replaces multiple characters (e.g. cultur* finds culture, cultural, and culturally).
Refine your results
Once you have done a search, you may want to further refine your results.
The Library catalogue results page provides the following options under the heading “Refine my results”:
- Content type
- Publication date
- Subject
- Language
- Library
- Location
- Source
- Author/Creator
- Journal type
- New records
You can also choose to “show only” results that are:
- Open Access
- Peer-reviewed journals
- Held at library
- Available online
You can then sort your results according to:
- Relevance
- Date-newest
- Date-oldest
- Title
- Author
How to save your search history
You can set up your library account to automatically save your search history. Here's how to enable this:
- Sign in to your library account
- Go to “Personal details and settings”
- In the “Personal settings” section, you can enable one or both search history options by toggling the buttons. These options are disabled by default.
What do these options mean?
Allow saving my search history
- When enabled, your searches will be automatically saved in your library account.
- You need to be signed in for searches to be saved.
- The system can store up to 100 searches. Once the limit is reached, the oldest search history item will be automatically removed.
- You can manually delete your search history in the “Search History” section of your account.
Use my search history for recent search suggestions
This allows the system to provide you with search suggestions based on your recent searches when you’re signed in.
For information on data security and privacy, please visit the system vendor’s privacy policy support page.
Primo Research Assistant
The Primo Research Assistant is a generative AI-powered feature that allows you to search the library catalogue using natural language questions. It generates an overview by analysing the descriptions and abstracts of relevant sources.
Once signed in, you can access the Primo Research Assistant in two ways:
- Main menu: Select the Primo Research Assistant icon from any page in the library catalogue.
- Search results page: Click on the Primo Research Assistant widget on the right-hand side of the screen.
As a beta feature and summarisation tool, it is useful for quick searches but it cannot be used for comprehensive searches. Please note that Primo Research Assistant has the following limitations:
- Summaries are based on 5 articles it determines to be relevant rather than based on objective evaluation methods. The summary may miss sources that are important to your topic.
- Provides summaries based on book and article abstracts and descriptions, which means it will miss details in the full text of the sources themselves.
- Searches online resources (not print) and selected content providers. The “Content Scope” section on the Primo Research Assistant support page outlines the type of content not included in this feature.
Primo Research Assistant will save your last 200 queries so that you can come back to them. Analytics and user feedback data are aggregated in a non-identifiable way.
Recommended Resources
As AI tools are constantly evolving, we recommend regularly visiting the Primo Research Assistant support page for the latest information. The support page includes:
- How the tool works (with a short tutorial video)
- What content is and is not covered by this tool
- Updates and recent changes
Visit our Support section to learn more about understanding your information needs.