CedarCommons User Search Guide

CedarCommons offers a number of different filtering and search tools to help maximize your search. 

Searching Within Collections 

When first entering the CedarCommons home page, you will find the primary search bar in the center of the page. Entering a search query in this bar will allow you to search within all collections in CedarCommons, including both the Digital Archive and the Institutional Repository. 

If you would like to limit your search within a specific collection from the start, select one of the collections listed under “Narrow by collection” under the search bar. 

These collections include Digital Archives, Journals and Proceedings, Academic Schools and Departments, Institutional Repository, Athletics, and the Martha McMillan Collection. Each collection contains a deeper sub-set of collections. 

When you select a specific collection, you will be directed to a landing page with its own search bar. Using this search bar, you will be able to search all records within any sub-collection. If you would like to limit your search to a specific sub-collection, select that collection header to navigate to that sub-collection’s landing page and search bar. 

Sub-collection can be a tool to narrow your search results, but should be used with caution. If you don’t know what collection the record you are looking for is in, it is best to start with the home search bar, as this provides the broadest search results. 

 

Filtering 

If you selected “Options” under the search bar, a drop-down menu will appear with different options for filtering your results. 

Sort By: This allows you to choose what order the records appear in: relevance, latest first (as in uploaded), title, author/creator, year (of publication), as well as whether that order should be ascending or descending. Results automatically sort by relevance. 

Display: This allows you to choose how many results you would like to display, from 10 to up to 100. If you are a regular CedarCommons user with an account, you can permanently set your display for a higher number by navigating to your Account Settings. Hover over “Personalize” in the top menu bar, select “Your Account.” In the “Your Account” window, select “Account Settings” in the top right corner. Scroll to the heading “Edit search-related settings” and use the “Number of search results per page” indicator to select the number of search results you would prefer. 

Collections: Using the last column, you can also indicate which collections you would like to search specifically. This will allow you to expand your search results even if you are searching initially form a subcollection. 

Format: This allows you to indicate what format you would like to view your search results in. Many of the options are technical displays and difficult to interpret, so we recommend sticking with the default “HTML brief.” 

 

Facets 

There are five facets that appear to the left of every search result. These facets allow users to limit their search results based on MARC fields associated with records. 

Publication Type: This facet indicates either the medium or content type of a record, such as Book, Audio, Magazine, Newsletter, etc. 

Year: The year range allows users to limit their search results to a specific range of years. This can be adjusted by using the sliding bar or by manually typing the year into the year input boxes 

School/Department: This facet indicates which school and/or department the author of a work is associated with. 

Subject: This allows the users to select specific subjects associated with records appearing in their search results. The majority of subjects are drawn from the Disciplines field. 

Author/Creator: This facet provides a list of authors associated with records in CedarCommons.

Author Type: This facet provides a way to limit results based on the author’s role as a faculty member, graduate or undergraduate student, or external submitter. 

 Full Search also appears as a tab above the facets. This allows users to search the bibliographic metadata as well as the actual content of PDFs. Full Search is automatically switched on for all searches. 

 

Boolean Operators 

Boolean operators can be used to create a search string that will more precisely define the parameters of your search. 

AND: Searches for results that include both the term before and the term after the operator in the same record. Example: particle AND physics will return results for records that include both keywords “particle” and “physics” 

OR: Searches for any record that includes either the term before the operator, the term after the operator, or both. Example: particle OR physics will return results for records that include only “particle,” only “physics,” and both “particle” and “physics.” 

NOT: Searches for records that do not include the term after the operator. Example: particle NOT physics will exclude all records containing the keyword “physics” from the results. 

NOTE: Boolean operators must be capitalized for the search engine to process them. This is intended to avoid searching errors when searching for titles such as “The Fox and the Crow.” 

In conjunction with these basic Boolean operators, you can also use [brackets], “quotation marks,” and (parenthesis) to indicate specific phrases and word relationships. 

[Brackets] indicates an exact word or phrase that the engine will search for.  Searching for exact words/phrases means that the words must appear in the record exactly as written within the brackets, meaning there can be no variation in spelling and the phrase must appear exactly in the order specified. 

(Parentheses) can be used to group Boolean searches together. Searching (particle OR physics) AND Einstein will search for records that include “Einstein” and “particle,” “Einstein” and “physics,” and “Einstein” and “particle” and “physics.” 

“Quotation Marks” indicates that a phrase is a group, meaning that they should appear in the order specified. However, the field can contain other words along with this phrase, such as “Robert Albert Einstein” when the search is “Albert Einstein.”  

 These features can be manually typed into the search bar, but they can also be indicated using the Advanced Search feature, which can be accessed via the “Advanced Search” link under every search bar.  

For more tips on how to maximize CedarCommon’s search engine, please see our technical search guide. 

If you continue to have difficulty locating a specific item, please reach out to ds@cedarville.edu for further assistance.