 Searching your library using a discovery layer. In this video, you will learn what a discovery layer is and how to use it to find library resources, the different types of discovery layers that may be available to you, depending on what college you belong to, how to sign into your library to get full access to a discovery layer's features, how to refine your search results to see the specific type of resources you need, and when you might want to use a discovery layer first, search an individual database or digital collection. So, what is a discovery layer? A discovery layer is a library search portal that provides one-stop searching of your college library's collection. This includes books, e-books, journal articles, video, digital media, and more. It also helps you manage and organize your research. Many of the Ontario colleges use a discovery layer called Page 1+. Others use Primo or Omni. For the purposes of this video, we'll be using Centennial College's library website, which utilizes Page 1+. So don't worry if it doesn't look exactly like your college's search portal. Regardless of the discovery layer used at your college, these tips will still be useful, as the search interfaces all look and work very similarly. Let's try a search using a discovery layer. Here are some tips for choosing your search terms. If you're searching for a particular book or article, try entering just the title, instead of using the full citation. If you're searching for a topic, put in the most relevant word first, picking out only the most important words in your search and eliminating unnecessary language. Leave out punctuation, and always make sure to check your spelling. Now, type in your keywords and click Search. In this case, we're searching for body image and teens. Firstly, you'll be prompted to sign into the library with your student or employee account if you've not already done so. This will allow you to access the full text, pin items to Cree, and save a list of favorite results. Request electronic contents not held by your library, request or renew your borrowed material. Once you've done your search, you'll be directed to your results page. Here you'll find a list of results from the library's collection and pages. Take a look at the Expand My Results menu on the left. This menu may be titled or arranged differently on your college's discovery layer, but the functionality will be the same. At the top of this menu, you may see an option to include records with no full text or expand results. By default, a discovery layer will usually show only results that you have access to through your library. Using this option will show you all results from the full text, including ones you may not have full text access to. If you choose to view these results, you may be able to request them through an interlibrary loan. To refine your search further, you can filter your results to see more relevant sources. You can filter by resource type, by date, collection, language, and so much more. This allows you to focus your search results so you can more easily locate the resource that is just right for you. For example, if you only want to view more current sources published in the past few years, you can enter your chosen date range and click refine. Here in our results list, we can filter by the following options. Available online to see results that you can access online from the library. Peer Reviewed Journals to see articles that are from peer reviewed publications, also known as scholarly to see resources that are available for free online without requiring a library account. You can also exclude a resource type by clicking the red check icon. This will remove this type from your results view. If you see a title that looks interesting, you can pin it to save it to your favorites list, by clicking the pin icon. The next time you sign in, you can go to my favorites and access your selections at any time. Finding Electronic Resources or Discovery Layer to view an electronic resource online such as an ebook, online article from a database or streaming video. Click on the title to open the record. This shows you more detailed information about the resource, including how to access it online. For example, looking at this record, we can see the title of the article, the authors, the source or the journal that it comes from and an indicator that it's from a peer reviewed journal. Below that you can see options to print, copy a link, view a citation or send it via email. Under this, you should see View Online for ways to access the full article. This article is available in three of the library journal's databases. All of these will link to the same article. Finding Physical Books Using a Discovery Layer You can also borrow print material from your library. In your College's Discovery Layer enter the title of the book you are looking for or enter search terms on the topic that you want and click search. In the Refine Your Results menu under Availability, click on Help by Library. It may also be called something like print physical item or available in library. Now your result page will only show physical books held by your library. You can then select a campus to further limit your results. If a book is available at another campus you can request it and it can be sent to your campus to pick up. After each book title, you will see a call number. If you have trouble locating the item on the shelf you can ask library staff for help. Finding News Sources Using a Discovery Layer If you are searching for information from newspaper articles, these results may not be included in your search results. To find out if your results include newspapers check the bottom of your results page and click the filters available under Resource Type. You may be able to limit your results to news sources by selecting newspaper articles under the Resource Type category. Or your library search platform may have a separate newspaper search for news sources. In this case, you will see this link underneath all the available resources and the following message at the bottom of your search results. When you click Newspaper Search, you will see a new search box which will search for your key terms for results only from news sources along with the drop down menu to search from featured newspapers which are a collection of Canadian newspapers such as The Toronto Star, National Post or the Globe and Mail that your college thinks will be of particular interest. Now you know how to search Discovery Layers to find articles, books and more. For more help with finding resources for your research please contact your college's library.