To access, click MetaSearch in the menu.
The term MetaSearch, also known as integrated searching, federated searching or cross-database searching, means to submit a query to numerous databases at once. The query is broadcast to each database, and an integrated list of the results is displayed from all the databases according to the results’ relevancy rank.
MetaSearch provides complete control over which databases are searched and provides a variety of options for viewing the results in these databases.

1. Select the list of databases you wish to use for your search from the dropdown list in Select Search Type.
2. A list of databases is now shown. Select the databases to be searched.
   • To display more information about the database, click .
   • To add this database to the database clipboard, click the icon. You can later use My Databases to copy these databases from the clipboard into a set that you name. These folders can then be selected during searching. After you click the icon, it changes to .
3. Enter a term in the search box or click the Advanced tab, select the relevant search fields and enter your search term(s).
4. Click to start the search in the specified databases.
   While MetaLib is searching, its progress is shown in a table listing the databases in which it is searching. This list shows the status of the search in each database and the number of hits found in each. You can click Cancel to stop the search and start again.
   Once MetaLib has finished searching, it displays the Results List. You can browse through this results list, as described in MetaSearch Results. Depending on how your MetaLib system has been configured, the results may be displayed immediately or you may have to click View retrieved.
5. You can click the Search function in the menu to do another search, Refine your query or review results of Previous Searches.

See also

Refine
Previous Searches

MetaSearch provides complete control over which databases are searched and provides a variety of options for viewing the results in these databases.
You can select the databases to be searched in the Select Search Type: dropdown list. The options are:

QuickSets: Displays a list of QuickSets for your selection. A QuickSet is a list of databases prepared by the institution. Your institution defines the order in which the QuickSets appear on the page.

My Databases: Displays your personalized database lists (for authenticated users only) that you created in My Databases. Your database clipboard appears on the list as well. You can define the order in which My Databases appear on the page.

Categories: Displays a dropdown list from which you can select a category and sub-category of databases.

Locate: Enables you to locate relevant databases for your search as described below. You can fill in any or all of these fields.

• Enter one or more words that appear in the title of the database in the Title field. You can use a question mark as a wild card (meaning type "master?" to locate MasterFILE Elite (EBSCO), MasterFILE Premier (EBSCO) and MasterFILE Select (EBSCO)).
• Enter the name of the vendor in the Database Vendor field. Here, too, you can use the question mark as a wild card.
• Select a Category and Sub-Category from the Category dropdown list.
• Enter any word that may appear in the database title or any descriptive information in the Any Word field. Here, too, you can use the question mark as a wild card.
• Institutions assign types to databases, such as index, library catalog, or encyclopedia. Select the type of the database in the Database Type field.
• Click , to start the search for databases according to the criteria that you entered.

New Databases: Enables you to see the latest databases made available to you by the institution. These databases also appear in the options mentioned above.

MetaSearch Results enable you to view results from the searched databases.
You can view the results of a specific database by clicking results by databases and then clicking the View or Jump link of any of the databases in the displayed list. To close this window, click Back. To view the combined results from the searched databases, click combined results. Click results by databases to view results from a single database or view all the combined results by clicking the View link in the Combined Results row.

MetaSearch Results can be displayed in three views: Table View, Brief View and Full View. You can toggle between the different views.

Note: If you have authenticated yourself, you can set your preferred view as part of your preferences.

At the top of the results, you can see the search term(s) for which you searched.

The Combined Results list includes the first results fetched from the databases that were searched and returned results. The results are displayed in the order of their relevance to the term(s) you entered.

In the single database Results list, sorting is only enabled if the database itself supports it. When sorting is available, you can sort the results by selecting an option in the Sort by field, such as: Author, Title or Year.

Note that some databases have been configured so that the results are displayed in their native interface. While MetaSearch is searching, the Status column displays as "Search & Link" for these databases. You can click the Jump link to display a database in its native interface.
In this case, you need to click view results. The results are then displayed in a new window.

You can narrow or broaden the results of the query using Refine in the menu.

You can view a list of the previous searches that you performed during this session and save them in your History for future sessions.

In the Combined Results, the Clusters and Facets panel provides additional options for accessing and filtering the results according to a variety of criteria. It enables an at-a-glance view of the results according to their Topic, Date, Author and Journal Title. Clustering is only performed on merged lists. When you click the View link in the Combined Results row, the results of clustering and facets are displayed in the right panel, as described in Clusters and Facets.

See also

MetaSearch - Browsing Through the Results

Various options are provided to browse through the results, as follows:

• Click Next or Previous to display another page of results. You can set the number of results displayed per page as part of your preferences.
• You can jump to the beginning of the list using the fast back << arrow or jump to the end of the list using the fast forward >> arrow in the Combined Results
• Click Combine More to fetch more results to the list that is currently displayed on the page. The list is resorted according to the relevance of the results, taking the new ones into account. Results that are added to the list are marked with the button to indicate which records have not yet been shown

Table View displays the records in a table, one row for each record. Table View provides the following options:

• Click the Title or the record sequential number to see the record's Full View.
• Click the database name to link to the database's Web site. When possible, the same record is displayed in the database's native interface.
• Click to save a record in your basket. Your basket is a temporary storage for records that you find interesting. You can later move records from the basket to an eShelf folder, save () records to disk (in various formats) or email () them. Once you add a record to the basket, the icon changes to .
• Click , to use SFX which provides access to a range of relevant electronic resources, such as the full text of articles or holdings information in your library's OPAC.

Brief View provides citation information in addition to the information provided in the Table View. Brief View provides the following options:

• Click a Title to see the Full View of the record.
• Click the database name to link to the database's Web site. When possible, MetaLib will link to the same record in the database's native interface.
• Click to save a record in your basket. Your basket is a temporary storage for records that you find interesting. You can later move records from the basket to an eShelf folder, save () records to disk (in various formats) or email () them. Once you add a record to the basket, the icon changes to .
• Click , to use SFX which provides access to a range of relevant electronic resources, such as the full text of articles or holdings information in your library's OPAC.

Full View provides all the record's information. It shows a page for each record and highlights the words you queried.

• Click to save a record in your basket. Your basket is a temporary storage for records that you find interesting. At a later stage, you can move records from the basket to an eShelf folder. Once you add the record to the basket, the icon changes to .
• Click , to use SFX which provides access to a range of relevant electronic resources, such as the full text of articles or holdings information in your library's OPAC.
• Click , to save the results to a file on your PC.
  A window is displayed in which you can select the format and encoding of the file to be saved.
  From the Record Format field, select one of the following:
  

  Standard: Saves the file as a standard text file in a format similar to that displayed.

  MARC21 format: Saves the file with MARC21 cataloging tags.

  Citation manager: Saves the file in the format of the Citation Manager to which you have access: RefWorks, EndNote, ProCite or Reference Manager.

  From the Encoding field, select one of the following:
  • UTF-8
  • ISO 8859-1
  • ASCII
• Click , to email the record.
  A window is displayed in which you can enter details of the file to be sent.
  From the Record Format field, select one of the following:

  Standard: Saves the file as a standard text file in a format similar to that displayed.

  MARC21 format: Saves the file with MARC21 cataloging tags.

  From the Encoding field, select one of the following:
  • UTF-8
  • ISO 8859-1
  • ASCII
• Click , to link directly to the full text without going through the SFX menu. This option only appears when available.

To access, click MetaSearch in the menu and then Refine.
You can refine your search results by combining them with another search term. To narrow your search, select And or Without; to broaden your search select Or. Select the field type to search (subject, title, author or year) and enter the term.

• Click .

To access, click MetaSearch in the menu and then Previous Searches.
This option is available only from MetaSearch. It displays a list of the previous searches that you performed during this session. This list is erased when you log out or the session ends. To store queries for future use, add them to your History.
You can do any of the following:

• Click a Query to redisplay the results of this query.
• Click Databases to see the list of databases that were searched.
• Click to store this query in your History so that you can run it again during future sessions or define an alert based on the query, if you are logged in. Previous Searches are not saved when a session ends. Once you click the icon, it changes to .
• Click to erase all previous searches in this session.