This guide will help you get the most out of sEURch, the library's search engine. You'll find step-by-step instructions for the most common searches and tips for optimizing your search results.
What is sEURch?
sEURch is a discovery tool, developed by OCLC (brand name: WorldCat Discovery). A search in sEURch returns journal articles, books, book chapters, journals, etc. You search the collections of the libraries of Erasmus University Rotterdam: the University Library, the library of the ISS in The Hague, the Rotterdamsch Leeskabinet, the library of the Erasmus University College and the Sanders Law Library. In sEURch, you also search the collections of libraries in the Netherlands and libraries worldwide.
sEURch recognizes the language settings of your browser and will display sEURch in that language. At the bottom of the screen, you can select a different language. Not all terms and descriptions will be translated from the English.
- What is covered by sEURch?
- When do you use sEURch?
- How do you use sEURch?
- Finding a known book
- Borrowing or reserving a book
- Getting the full-text of articles
- Too many or not enough results?
- Exporting to RefWorks
- Questions about sEURch?
What is covered by sEURch?
It is important to know that not all databases offered by the UL are covered by sEURch: some publishers don’t want their journals, books or databases being indexed. Especially the fields of Law and Medicine have insufficient coverage.
The basis of sEURch consists of WorldCat.org. WorldCat.org consists of WorldCat, with the physical collections of libraries worldwide, and a ‘central index’, with the metadata of collections from publishers like Elsevier, Springer among others, and vendors like ProQuest and EBSCO. A number of databases can be searched separately - they are not part of the central index. The link resolver of OCLC provides the link to the full-text of articles and e-books the EUR subscribes to.
If you use the search bar to search, you search in a selection of databases. In the Advanced Search you can mark the non-default databases to search them. They are not in the list of default databases, because of the content type (newspaper articles or archival material).
The collections of the University Library, the library of the ISS in The Hague, the Rotterdamsch Leeskabinet, Erasmus University College and the Sanders Law Library, are central in sEURch. This means that books and articles in the collection of the EUR are given a higher relevancy ranking than books and articles not available in our collections: they appear on top of the results list when you use the default sorting order (library).
In the results list the availability information is shown for just the first copy of a book in the collection of our libraries. It's possible that multiple copies are available: when you click a title, you can see which EUR library holds a copy of a book under the header Availability of this Edition at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
When do you use sEURch?
You can use sEURch to find an article or a book you already know, but also to find literature about a specific topic, or to get inspiration about a topic quickly. If you want to do an extensive literature search, we advise you to use subject specific databases; they offer extra options, not offered by sEURch, for example using a thesaurus or citation searching. The Guides per discipline can help you select subject specific databases.
How do you use sEURch?
- Enter your keywords in the search bar. When you use multiple keywords, sEURch combines them automatically with AND.
- By default, sEURch uses a keyword index. In this index author, title, ISBN, publisher, topics and publication year are included.
- If you want to use Boolean operators (AND, OR or NOT), you must write the operator in capital letters (for example teenagers OR adolescents).
- When two or more terms have to appear in a specific order, you have to put the search terms between straight quotation marks, for example "Positive psychology".
- You can truncate with a *: with market* you find results with market, markets, marketing, marketplace, etc. There have to be at least three characters before the *.
- You can also use wildcards:
- # replaces 1 character, for example with wom#n you find woman and women. There have to be at least three characters before the #.
- ? replaces 0 to 9 characters. For example: re?tion will return revolution, recreation, relation, representation, relaxation, etc.
Finding a known book
- In the search results several editions and formats of a book are combined into 1 record. The version shown is the most recent edition which is part of the collection of the libraries of the EUR. When the EUR libraries own other editions as well, you see Other Editions and Formats at Erasmus University Rotterdam under the record. Click View All (xx) to see these editions.
- If you mark Show all in the left upper corner of the screen (instead of the default Group editions and formats), sEURch will show all editions and formats available in sEURch. Use the filter Erasmus University Rotterdam under Held by Library to see which editions are available in the collections of EUR libraries.
TIP: when you enter the publication year in the search bar as well, you will find the required edition of the book faster, enter for example ‘clinical psychology kazdin 2024’.
Borrowing or reserving a book
- Click the title of the book
- Under the header Availability of this Edition at Erasmus University Rotterdam, you can see where the copy or copies of the EUR are, and if the books are available for loan, checked out, or on hold by another borrower, or available for reference only.
- When the book is available for loan, click the button Place Hold in the Access Options box. When you are not logged in, you have to login with your library account.
- Next, you can choose to get Any Copy, which means that the library system will select the copy of the book that's retrieved for you. You can also change Any Copy into Specific Copies or Volumes and choose a specific copy of the book yourself.
- Next, choose the pick-up option - that's the location you want to go to to get the book: the University Library in Rotterdam or the ISS in The Hague.
- Click Submit
- You are notified by e-mail when the book is available at the pick-up location of your choice.
- You can check the status by clicking the link My Account in the right upper corner of sEURch. Under Requests you find the book(s) you requested, under Checkouts the books you borrowed.
If a book is not available in the collections of the EUR libraries, you can see a list of libraries that have the book in their collection by clicking the button Other Availability & Holdings. Use the button Request item through interlibrary loan in the Access Options box to request the book from another library. More information about ILL (interlibrary loan).
Getting the full-text of articles
By using the button View PDF (opens the PDF directly) or View full text in the list of results you can directly go the full-text of many articles. For eBooks this button is called View eBook. You can also encounter the button Access Online. If you are outside the IP-ranges of the EUR and you haven't logged in during your browser session, you will first get the login screen of the EUR.
When you click the title of an article, you can see more information about the link(s) by opening the Access Online box. You can for example see which databases give access to the full-text. When the button in the list of results or in the Access Options box doesn’t give the desired result, you can use this to find an alternative link.
If an article is not available in the collections of the EUR libraries, you can use the button Request item through interlibrary loan in the Access Options box to request the article from another library. More information about ILL (interlibrary loan).
Too many results?
Use the refine options at the left side of the screen. You can limit the number of results by selecting a specific type of publications, like peer reviewed publications or ebooks. One filter is Database, this allows you to filter on database(s) in which the results are found. If you want to use your selection of filters for your following searches, you have to mark Retain Filters.
In the advanced search (the link is available in the grey bar) you can perform a more specific search, for example for words in title or abstract and/or the name of the author.
You can also use indexes in the search bar:
- Ti: - searches for words in the (sub)title or in the table of contents – eg. Ti:case study research
- Ti= - searches for exact matches in the (sub)title or in the table of contents – eg. Ti=case study research will only find books or articles with exactly that title (Encyclopedia of case study research is not found)
- Te: - searches only in the title and in the subtitle. This index only works for records in the WorldCat database, so it works best for books.
- Au: - searches for the author - eg. Au:Yin
- Combining is possible – eg. Ti:case study research au:Yin
The bibliographical information of an article can be available from multiple databases. They are not always deduplicated.
Not enough results?
Check your keywords: typing errors in your search terms are not recognized by sEURch.
If you mark Expand Search with Related Terms sEURch will search a number of thesauri and authority files (for example the Medical Subject Headings and the Arts and Architecture Thesaurus) for related terms based on the search term(s) you entered. If related terms are found, they are added to your search terms. Click the link Include related terms to see the term(s) added.
Exporting to RefWorks
You can export individual items to RefWorks by clicking the Cite button. Export to RefWorks is one of the options. If you want to export multiple items, you can use the Saved items option.
- Click the Save button of the record you want to export - the record is added to the Saved Items
- If necessary, repeat this for other records
- Tip: at the bottom of the search results list, you find the option Save items on page
- In the grey bar at the top of the screen, open the Saved Items list
- Click the Cite button
- Choose Export to RefWorks
Always check the imported data! There might be information entered incorrectly or incomplete.
Questions about sEURch?
You can send your questions about sEURch by using the general 'Ask your question' form on the library website.