Introduction to EOLAS – Yeats Library, Sligo

What is EOLAS?

EOLAS is our very own library search engine. It was created by a company called EBSCO, who also supply us with e-books and databases.

EOLAS works like most popular search engines. It searches most of our databases and our print catalogue all in one go.

If a database isn’t searched by EOLAS, you’ll have to access it directly and use the search options inside each database.

Databases in EOLAS Search

IN	OUT
Academic Search Complete	Digital Theatre Plus
Business Source Complete	IHS
Cochrane Library	Irish Times Archive
eBook Academic Collection	Standards-BSOL
Ebook Central	Standards-SAI Global
Emerald Insight	Teacher Reference Centre
ERIC	WARC
IEEE Explore Digital Library	Web of Science
JSTOR
MEDLINE
Teacher Reference Centre
Open Dissertations
OpenStax
Pubmed
Regional Business News
ScienceDirect
SPORTDiscus
Teacher Reference Centre

How to Search EOLAS

There are two ways to search with EOLAS:

A simple search
An advanced search

How To Use EOLAS Simple Search

To use this search method, first go to the Yeats Library homepage. The EOLAS search-box will be at the top of this page, no matter what device you use to view it.

The default search is set as Keyword, but you can choose to search by Title or Author too from the dropdown list on the left-hand side of the search-box.

A Simple Search will pull in all the results that are related to the search you do. That includes direct results where the Keyword you use is also in the title, or material that is tagged with that word in some way.

No Results?

If you don’t get any results back from your first search, don’t worry. Just try again, but use a different combination of words or pieces of information until you do get a list of results.

It’s a good idea to keep a log of all the searches that you do try. You can do this on paper or digitally. This way you can compare your choices and see what combinations work best for you.

Results!

We have access to a lot of resources, so you may end up with a very, very long list of results.

Where to Start?

If you want to look at your search result straight away: go ahead!

There will be three search boxes at the top of the page, but you don’t need to use this right now, so feel free to ignore them

Simply scroll down the screen and click on whatever result you like.

Clicking on the title of each result will bring you to the file we have on that item. Some items, like print books, will be found in the library building. The others will be found in the databases where they’re stored.

How to Use EOLAS Advanced Search

Don’t worry if this looks like too much information, or isn’t quite what you want. An EOLAS Advanced Search will help you remove irrelevant content from the list to make it more manageable.

To use this search method, use the start the same way as before: go to the Yeats Library homepage and look for the EOLAS search-box.

The Advanced Search method allows you to filter the results before you run a search. It also allows you to filter the results in a few different ways, after you’ve run the search.

You can apply three different filters before you run your search:

Keyword
Title
Author

How to use the Keyword Search

Go to the EOLAS search-box. Keyword is set as the automatic choice. There is no need to choose another option.

A Keyword is like a subject or topic, e.g., ‘medicine’ or ‘architecture’
Think of how you would do a simple search in a popular search engine. EOLAS simple search will be quite like that.
Start with picking just one or two Keywords for your first search.
Type them into the search-box and start your search.

How to use the Title Search

You can use information about the title of a book, e-book, article, or journal to look for it. You don’t need the whole title, but the more information you have the better.

Go to the drop-down menu in the search-box and select Title from the list.
Type all the information that you have about the title into the search-box, e.g., ‘automated vehicle design’
Start your search

How to use the Author Search

You can use information about the author to find any books or articles that they’ve written. Be sure that you have the correct spelling of their name.

In library systems, any files on people are stored in alphabetical order (A-Z), but with the person’s Family Name listed first, folwed by a comma, and then their Personal Name.

Go to the drop-down menu in the search-box and select Author from the list.
Type in all the information that you have about the author’s name.
Remember to put their Family Name first and then their Personal Name, e.g., Hancock, John
Start your search

More Results!

For now, we’re going to ignore the three search-boxes again and scroll a little down the page. Look for the Refine Results filters instead.

On a PC or laptop, this should be on the left-hand side of the screen.
On a smartphone or tablet, it should be hidden under the arrows ‘<<’ on the left-hand side of the screen, beside the Search Results figure.

Refine Results

There are multiple options in this set of limiters. To whittle down the number of search results, we’ll just use the first two limiter options:

Limit To
Source Types

Limiter 1: Limit To

This limiter gives you four ways to filter your search results.

Peer Reviewed
Available in Library Collection
Print Catalogue
Publication Date

You can select or deselect each option by using the tick box beside it. Or for the last option, by using the sliding scale to adjust the timeline.

There are more options listed at the bottom of this pane, but for now we don’t need them.

Each time you make an adjustment, the results list will automatically recalibrate to reflect that change.

Peer Reviewed

This means that the journal article or paper has been formally reviewed by a panel of professionals or experts and published by a recognised professional or academic journal (which is a kind of magazine).

This only applies to journal articles or papers, it does not apply to books or e-books.

You can use it to limit your search results to only articles and papers that have been peer-reviewed. This is usually the standard that most lecturers will ask for.

Available in the Library Collection

This is the default setting.

This means that your search results include everything from the Print Catalogue and the databases that EOLAS can search.

It includes all available journal articles, book reviews, print books, e-books, summaries etc.

Print Catalogue

This means that you can restrict the search results to just the printed books that we have available in the library collections.

Publication Date

The sliding scale here allows you to adjust the timeframe in which the results were published. It is default timespan is the date range 1^st January 1322 until the end of the current year.

If you are looking for the latest results in nursing articles or autonomous driving vehicles, you should shorten the timespan to a more recent span of years. say the last ten years or so.

If you are looking for results within a historical period, you could change the date range to show just those dates.

Limiter 2: Source Types

This pane allows you to refine your search results by what media the result was published in.

Journal articles are published in Academic Journals
Magazine stories and reports are published in Magazines
Conference papers are published in Conference Materials
Trade articles, stories and reviews are published in Trade Publications
News articles are published in News
Books are published as books
E-Books are published as e-books

The most popular options for refining results are automatically listed.

The default option is “All Results”. You can deselect this and choose another option by using the tick boxes beside each option.

The “Show More” option gives you lots of other choices with which to filter your search results. You can select multiple options using this. Changing any of the options will automatically update your results list.

Happy Searching!

Whatever way you decided to do your EOLAS Search, you will end up with a list of results.

It can take a little while to get used to how it works. Try some searches before you need to find resources for big projects.

Keep a list of the searches that you do. Even if they don’t give you the results that you want. This way you’ll build up a log of what search patterns work best for you, and which don’t.

For more information you can about searching with EOLAS:

Check out our answers on Askus!!
Read our Research Guide
Watch our support videos