Novanet Discovery is the library catalogue shared by all the Novanet libraries (University and NSCC libraries across the province). Novanet Discovery provides a simple way to broadly search for all kinds resources held by all of the Novanet libraries. From one place, you can search across many disciplines, libraries and sources: books, videos, articles, theses, book reviews, conference proceedings, technical reports, and more.
Benefits (Pros) include:
Disadvantages (Cons) include:
On the wireless network or off-campus, you will be prompted to login using your Mount credentials (the same as for Moodle)
This is the least sophisticated search in Novanet, so expect lots of results.
Visit the Mount Library website. The default search on the main page is Novanet Discovery.
Our sample research topic is What is the environmental impact of electric cars?
You can search Novanet Discovery using natural language, using words as they are spoken or written, such as the full sentence.
Natural language searching is possible in Novanet Discovery, but is really a starting point to determine if there are materials available on a topic. Using phrase and subject searching may be more efficient, as shown in the next lessons.
Be sure to login using your Mount credentials when prompted (i.e. if you are on the Mount wireless network or off-campus); this enables you to view the articles that are gathered from Mount Library databases and shown in Novanet Discovery.
By default, Novanet Discovery returns results from a wide variety of sources (books, articles, videos, newspapers, dissertations, even microform). By default Novanet Discovery sorts the results by relevance. A complex algorithm, or formula, determines the best matches and lists them first.
This video shows an example of natural language searching (entering sentences as spoken or written) in Novanet Discovery.
Natural language searching is possible in Novanet Discovery, but is really a starting point to determine if there are materials available on a topic. Using phrase and subject searching may be more efficient, as shown in the next lessons.
The sample research question for these examples is What is the environmental impact of electric cars?
To search for a phrase (words in the exact order), put quotation marks around the phrase. It's possible to combine words and phrases in a Novanet Discovery search. If you do not use quotes, Novanet Discovery will find items that contain the individual words, but not necessarily in the order you specified.
E.g.,
global warming finds the words global and warming anywhere in the items
"global warming" (with the quotation marks) finds only items containing the exact phrase in that order.
In our example, let's compare the difference between searching for electric cars versus "electric cars"
First, conduct a simple search for electric cars in Novanet Discovery:
Next, conduct a New Search and search for "electric cars" in quotation marks.
The New Search link is at the top of the Novanet Discovery screen.
Phrase searching is a way to make your searches more focused. Note that its success depends on knowing the correct phrase to use!
This video demonstrates the difference between simple searching (a couple of words) and phrase searching (words must be in a specific order) in Novanet Discovery.
When examining a list of results in Novanet Discovery, using subject headings (more formal, controlled terms to describe something) can be a way to refine your search.
Here is an example from a search for electric cars
The basic Novanet Discovery search simply finds both words anywhere they may appear. How do we know the materials are truly about electric cars? By examining and using the subject headings. There are two ways to do this:
Clicking on these subject headings will take me to materials that have the same subject heading applied.
However, in Novanet Discovery, using the Advanced Search is the best place to enter a subject search:
Now the list of results will be greatly reduced, but more relevant to the topic.
Finally, a note that subject searching in Novanet Discovery is weaker than in Library databases, but it can be used to start refining your search results.
This video takes the example of a search for "electric cars" and refines the search using subject terms that have been added to Novanet Discovery.
Now only books will display. This will be a mixture of print books and e-books. You can choose e-books by selecting "Full Text Online" and select Mount Library and Novanet locations using the Library
Or, the second way you can find books only:
A list of results appears. Remove the videos from the list by closing the Audio-Visual button.
And further refine as described above.
This video is the first of two which show different methods to limit the search to books only in Novanet Discovery.
The first method is to use the "Resource Type" limiter in the results screen.
This video demonstrates using "Books & Videos" searching to limit results to books in Novanet Discovery.
This video demonstrates how to interpret the results of a book search on Novanet Discovery.
There are some additional tips for finding books in Novanet Discovery, available through the Mount Library's Help Guide on Finding Books Using Novanet.
See also the Library Home Page, Library Research Help.
In Novanet Discovery, it is possible to refine your results to articles instead of books. But it is important to note that this may not include the articles that are available in every Mount Library database.
Using Novanet Discovery, find "electric cars" as a phrase search (in quotations).
In the results that display, on the left-hand side of the screen will appear a Show only and Refine My Results menu.
Use the Refine My Results: Articles link if you want only articles (but peer-review is not as important). Use the Show only: Peer-reviewed Journals link if your articles must be scholarly/peer-reviewed.
This video shows how to conduct a search in Novanet Discovery and limit the results to articles, and then articles in peer-reviewed journals. The search is for the phrase "electric cars."
This video demonstrates that once you have found articles on Novanet Discovery, you can:
Once you have a list of search results, you can use the Creation date menu on the left hand side of the screen to find recently published (or older) items on a particular topic.
To do this, either enter the date range in the text boxes and select "Refine"
Or use the sliding scale to set the (published) dates you are interested in. Choose “Refine” to apply those dates.
This video demonstrates refining Novanet Discovery results by date, using either the text boxes or the sliding scale found under "Creation Date."
The advanced search of Novanet Discovery enables you to combine search terms, such as title, author, subject.
You can also search by ISBN (though this can be searched in the basic search bar, too). You can search for a call number.
The advanced search is opened by selecting Advanced Search at the top of the screen (next to the search box) once you are in Novanet Discovery.
Notice that the pull-down menu on the first line of the advanced search is greyed out. This line is reserved for words in Title, but you can create combinations using any of the lines.
Here is an example of a search for audio-visual materials (videos) with the subject electric vehicles OR the subject electric automobiles assigned to them.
Here is an example of a search for items (any type) where the title contains electric car and the author contains Howell
One of Novanet's special strengths is its ability to use natural language and phrase searching (as well or better than many databases).
This makes Novanet very good at finding a book or an article for which you already know the title.
This means that when you look at a bibliography or references list, you can copy and paste the title of a book or article into Novanet Discovery to quickly see if the Mount Library has the book or article.
In this example, find the following book:
Fletcher, Seth. Bottled Lightning : Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy. 1st ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011.
Because you know this is a book title, go to the Books & Videos search from the Library homepage. You can use phrase searching because you know you want these words in this precise order.
Novanet Discovery matches the phrase and if it finds it, returns results.
In this example, find the article "End-of-life (EOL) issues and options for electric vehicle batteries" by Ramoni and Zhang. It appeared in the December 2013 issue of the journal Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy.
The article title is "End-of-life (EOL) issues and options for electric vehicle batteries"
Enter the article title into Novanet Discovery. You can use quotes for phrase searching because you know you want these words in this precise order.
Novanet Discovery matches that exact text string and if it finds it, returns it.
This video demonstrates searching Novanet Discovery from a bibliography, using the known title of a book, and the known title of an article in a journal.
DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier. A DOIs is a persistent link assigned by a publisher to an individual published article/study/other online publication. They are unique to the item, a precise match. They always begin with the number 10.
Citation styles now instruct us to include DOI in our bibliographies/reference lists, because they make it much easier for other researchers to find the precise reference - simply by searching for and linking to the DOI.
Here is an example of a reference list entry which includes a DOI.
Helmers, E., & Marx, P. (2012). Electric cars: Technical characteristics and environmental impacts. Environmental Sciences Europe, 24(1), 1-15. doi:10.1186/2190-4715-24-14
The DOI in this example is 10.1186/2190-4715-24-14 and it links to the URL for the article.
If Novanet Discovery finds the article via Mount Library databases, the article is returned.
Double check that it is the correct article; it is very rare to have either duplicate DOIs or different DOIs for the same article, but it happens.
If you don't find the DOI in Novanet Discovery, it is worth trying Google Scholar (but remember to use Document Delivery instead of paying for articles!). Finally, you can try CrossRef as a source to find articles from their DOI (with the same caution).
This video demonstrates searching for an article in Novanet Discovery by using its DOI: Digital Object Identifier. DOIs often appear in references lists. When there is one - use it!
We didn't cover everything about Novanet Discovery in this course!
Consult the Novanet Discovery Help page for more material about Novanet Discovery and its use. You can visit this page whenever you are searching Novanet.