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Opticianry (Dale Mabry): Use the library catalog

Links and tips for your library research.

Also called Primo, the Catalog is the Library's discovery search for many sources

Find books, articles, videos, & more

For best results, be sure you are signed in!

Did you know? The Library is in Canvas!

Besides using the Library Catalog box above, you can always access library resources from your Canvas course menu.

Tutorials for using the Discovery search

Often called the library catalog or by its software name, Primo, the Library Discovery search, is a one-stop search engine for books and eBooks, videos, articles, digital media, and more. It also has tools to help you save and cite what you find.

Searching

Citing

Improve your search results

Quick tips

  • Library search tools often work best with just the most important, or key, words, and not long sentences or phrases.
    • One exception might be if the long sentence or phrase is the known title of a work you are hunting down.
  • Try writing out how you would describe your topic to a friend, then pick the key words.
  • Leave out words such as cause, effect, and comparison, unless these are part of a known title or technical term. 

This video demonstrates how to pick good key words: