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How to Use Summon

Default Search

A default search using Summon is a keyword search against the items we have local access to:

  • articles from journals to which we subscribe
  • content from participating databases to which we subscribe
  • freely available content such as from open access journals or government websites
  • books, ebooks, government documents, archival materials, special collection and many other types of items from our library

With Summon, you will find items including scholarly journal articles, newspaper articles, eBooks, audio files, and video files. A simple search of one or two words will return thousands of results; use phrase searching, field searching, and facets to refine your search and return fewer results.

Use the "Include results from outside your library's collection" option to include records from other library catalogs, articles from journals to which we don't have subscriptions, and records from databases to which we don't subscribe. You can request most of these items via interlibrary loan.

Keep in Mind...

Searching Specific Fields

Summon will search across many fields automatically. For example, entering an ISBN, ISSN, or call number will bring back records related to those fields.

You can explicitly search a field using the strategy: field:(search terms). For example, the search title:(Art of Creative Teaching) finds records that contain those words in the title.

Use quotation marks with this strategy to find records with exact phrases.  The search title:("Art of Creative Teaching") finds records with that exact phrase in the title field.

Searchable fields:

  • Title
  • Subject Terms
  • Author
  • Publisher
  • Publication Title
  • Volume
  • Issue
  • Language
  • Notes
  • ISBN
  • ISSN
  • DOI
  • DEWEY