usyd library thesis

Library catalogue

The Library catalogue is a single platform that provides access to the University’s print and online collections. It’s the best place to find information for assignments and recommended readings from your lecturer.

Use the Library catalogue for:

simple keyword searches
advanced searches that achieve more targeted results.

For optimal results, search subject-specific databases in addition to using the Library catalogue .

access results that are only available to Sydney staff and students
request items from other campuses, or not held at University of Sydney
manage loans and requests
save searches and set up alerts when new content is published.

Collections

The Library catalogue provides access to almost a billion:

journal articles
Open Access resources and more.

How to search the Library catalogue

Simple search.

Simple Search is easy to do:

Enter one or more words in the search bar.
Click “Search”.

Advanced Search

Advanced Search gives you a range of options to incorporate into your search strategy to achieve more targeted results.

Advanced Search Criteria

Filter your search with the following criteria:

Our library or Our library + other institutions
Author/Creator
Call number
Material type
Publication date

Advanced Search tips

Boolean operators.

Boolean operators are words and symbols, such as AND , OR and NOT , that can be used alongside keywords to limit or expand search results.

AND (both) – limit your results by adding more terms which must appear in every item (e.g. britain AND monarchy).
OR (either) – expand your results by combining synonyms with OR (e.g. britain OR “united kingdom”).
NOT – exclude words that produce irrelevant results (e.g. web NOT spider).

Use wildcards ( ? or * ) if you are unsure of spelling or want to include more than one variation.

? replaces a single character (e.g., wom?n finds woman, women).
* replaces multiple characters (e.g. cultur* finds culture, cultural, and culturally).

Refine your results

Once you have done a search, you may want to further refine your results.

The Library catalogue results page provides the following options under the heading “Refine my results”:

Content type
Journal type
New records

You can also choose to “show only” results that are:

Open Access
Peer-reviewed journals
Held at library
Available online

You can then sort your results according to:

Date-newest
Date-oldest

How to save your search history

You can set up your library account to automatically save your search history. Here's how to enable this:

Sign in to your library account
Go to “Personal details and settings”
In the “Personal settings” section, you can enable one or both search history options by toggling the buttons. These options are disabled by default.

What do these options mean?

Allow saving my search history.

When enabled, your searches will be automatically saved in your library account.
You need to be signed in for searches to be saved.
The system can store up to 100 searches. Once the limit is reached, the oldest search history item will be automatically removed.
You can manually delete your search history in the “Search History” section of your account.

Use my search history for recent search suggestions

This allows the system to provide you with search suggestions based on your recent searches when you’re signed in.

For information on data security and privacy, please visit the system vendor’s privacy policy support page .

Primo Research Assistant

The Primo Research Assistant is a generative AI-powered feature that allows you to search the library catalogue using natural language questions. It generates an overview by analysing the descriptions and abstracts of relevant sources.

Once signed in, you can access the Primo Research Assistant in two ways:

Main menu: Select the Primo Research Assistant icon from any page in the library catalogue.
Search results page: Click on the Primo Research Assistant widget on the right-hand side of the screen.

As a beta feature and summarisation tool, it is useful for quick searches but it cannot be used for comprehensive searches . Please note that Primo Research Assistant has the following limitations:

Summaries are based on 5 articles it determines to be relevant rather than based on objective evaluation methods. The summary may miss sources that are important to your topic.
Provides summaries based on book and article abstracts and descriptions, which means it will miss details in the full text of the sources themselves.
Searches online resources (not print) and selected content providers. The “Content Scope” section on the Primo Research Assistant support page outlines the type of content not included in this feature.

Primo Research Assistant will save your last 200 queries so that you can come back to them. Analytics and user feedback data are aggregated in a non-identifiable way.

Recommended Resources

As AI tools are constantly evolving, we recommend regularly visiting the Primo Research Assistant support page for the latest information. The support page includes: