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ENC 1102 - Steinhardt (Dale Mabry): Library discovery search

Resources and tips to help you complete your assignments for Professor Steinhardt's course.

Getting to the Discovery search

On your Canvas course page, follow the steps to access HCC Libraries Online and be automatically signed in. Or use the shortcut below.

Shortcut to the Discovery search

Find books, articles, videos, & more

For best results, be sure you are signed in!

Start with good key words

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:

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

Finding Print Books in the Library

To Find a book in the library using the Library Catalog (HCC Libraries Search):

  1. You need the Call Number
  2. Check the Location (Circulation, Reference, etc.)
  3. Check the availability (available, checked out, etc.)

If you can't find what you need, ask for help. If you need a book for your research that we don't have at your campus library, you can request it.