LibSearch @ St. Kate's

Libsearch has several functions:

• It’s a discovery tool that helps you search for books, articles, media, and other library resources.
• It's the online library catalog which you can use to request items from St. Kate's, and MnPALS Partner libraries.
• It’s the library account system for managing your check-outs, renewals, and hold requests.

LibSearch draws its results from the following sources:

• Print books, journals, and media from MnPALS Partner Library collections

• Articles, ebooks, and streaming media from online databases

• St. Kate's digital collections, including Sophia Repository and Sophia Scholar (faculty works).

When you are doing advanced-level research or specific disciplinary research, it is better to use a specific database for that field of study. You can search for databases by subject or use a research guide to determine databases for a specific discipline.

• Always check your citations that are generated from LibSearch before using them in your finished papers/projects.

• EBOOK vs. BOOK: occasionally the system misidentifies whether an item is electronic or print/physical. If you need help identifying the definite format, please contact a librarian. 

• REVIEWS vs. the actual ARTICLE or BOOK: sometimes the item format is not accurate until the full resource record is opened, and the full record format may be erroneous. For example, book reviews may be mistakenly identified as "ARTICLE." Again, if you need help identifying the definite format, please ask a librarian.

• LibSearch is a catalog of most of St. Kate's Library resources, but not all. For example, articles from these databases are often NOT found in LibSearch:
  •  American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals 
  •  Black Freedom Struggle  
  •  Digital Public Library of America – DPLA
  •  Minnesota Digital Library
  •  MLA Bibliography
  •  Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers 
  • and possibly others

Instead plan to search the above resources directly through the database/web interfaces rather than using LibSearch.

Note that depending upon your device, it may be automatically changing your quote marks into curly quotes (e.g. on some iPhones). This is on the vendor's list to be fixed but has not been resolved yet. 

• Sign in to LibSearch to ensure that favorites/pins are saved for future use. Favorite pins disappear after a browser session is closed unless you have signed in.

• When performing a title search, it is recommended that you omit leading articles. For example, Oxford Handbook is preferred to The Oxford Handbook.

• Curly quote marks versus straight quotes give different results . A bug in the system causes search strings wrapped in curly quotes ( “ ” ) to sometime show different search results compared to when users use regular straight quotes ( " " ). For example, a search for “australian intelligence community“ brings up a different number of search results than using straight quotes "australian intelligence community". 

• Articles: Conference Abstracts  

  Some "full text" records are for abstracts of papers presented at conferences which are inaccurately described as type "Articles."  Please realize that conference abstracts are in fact the full text. No further full text was ever intended nor will ever be made available.

• If you receive a 400 error in Google Chrome, you will probably need to clear your browser cache. Here's a Knowledgebase Article .

• Personal Details addresses cannot be updated in My Library Account. To update your preferred name or other personal info, please contact the Help Desk at 651-690-6402 or email helpdesk@stkate.edu.

• EBSCO brief news articles and reviews that are only one page (or part of a page) are more prone to linking problems. Expect to have to Interlibrary Loan (ILL) many of these since these records have not necessarily received the same quality linking metadata. Feel free to report these errors.
• "Ahead of print" articles often have linking problems in LibSearch. Expect to have to Interlibrary Loan (ILL).
• Supplemental articles and issues may not be available in PubMed even when a LibSearch record exists. Please contact a librarian for assistance in obtaining missing content. 
• Some AUDIO streaming podcasts may incorrectly show up as type VIDEO.