Find Articles is UNT Libraries' online service that allows you to search one place to find full-text, online articles that appear in journals that we subscribes to. The system that powers this search is called Summon.
Back to topWe can report broken links to Serials Solutions for repair, but first we need you to report them to us. To help make this easier, we've added a button to each article in your search results, labeled "Report Broken Link."
To report a broken link, click the button for the affected article. A very brief form will pop up asking you to tell us what appeared to be wrong. You also may optionally enter your email address and comments, if you have them. After you submit the form, the system sends the metadata for that article along with your comments to us, and we forward that information along to the vendor who manages the system.
Summon's search index is huge—it contains documents from thousands of different journals and publishers. But it doesn't actually host the published version of anything. In fact, where and how to get the published version of a document varies from institution to institution depending on what journals and database packages the institution subscribes to. So linking you to a copy of your article isn't a simple matter of pointing to a single URL where that document resides—it's actually a complex negotiation between the Summon service and any number of potential external systems. Often these external systems are owned by one of a few different content aggregators—such as EBSCO, ProQuest, Gale, etc. On top of this, not all content in Summon can be linked to directly—in some cases you get routed through UNT Libraries' link resolver, which might send you to a copy of the journal instead of the exact article.
When you click a full-text link, Summon first tries to determine where to get the document. If it can link you directly to the article, it submits a request for it to the appropriate service. In order to get you the correct article, the system has to request it in just the right way using just the right data. Since there are no guarantees about data format, quality, or consistency from publisher to publisher, aggregator to aggregator, and system to system, any data in the mix that doesn't quite match up can make the lookup request fail and block you from accessing your article.
If you find an article using Find Articles but can't get the full text through Summon, there's a good chance that you can get it another way. Use the link labeled "Check More Sources" (beside the Report Broken Link button) to get a short list of steps you can take to find it, tailored specifically to that article.
Back to topIf you are having technical issues getting Find Articles to work correctly other than broken full-text article links, please submit a report to us via our Ask Us service.
Back to topCurrently UNT Libraries has over 700 databases activated in Summon. Using Find Articles queries everything that's in the Summon index that we subscribe to, limited (by default) to journal articles from peer-reviewed sources.
But the content in Summon's index doesn't come from databases, so you're not really searching databases when you use Find Articles. Summon's content comes straight from journal publishers. As far as Summon is concerned, databases only indicate where it might fetch an article's full-text—they do not serve as the data source for the index. This is why you can't limit your Find Articles search to particular databases.
Back to topSummon allows for phrase searching with the use of “ ”. The query “teacher education” will find results with that phrase.
The single search box in Summon (basic search box or keyword search box in advanced search) will search across many fields automatically. For example, entering an ISBN, ISSN, or Call Number will bring back associated records.
You can explicitly search a field using the syntax: “field:(query).” For example, the search ISSN:(1234-5678), finds records that contain that value in the ISSN field.
Searchable fields:
Summon offers the following Boolean operations: OR, NOT and AND. The operators must be written in ALL CAPS.
By default, all terms in a search are combined with the AND operator. To expand the results set, use the OR operator “microcircuits OR nanocircuits” will return items that contain either term.
This can be combined with quoted terms such as “teacher education” OR “educator training”.
To exclude items in Summon, use the NOT operator or “-” character before a term. When used in the following query “animal NOT dog” the results will not include the term “dog”.
Searches within Summon can be performed using the wildcards “?” and “*”.
The question mark (?) will match any one character and can be used to find “Olsen” or “Olson” by searching for “Ols?n”.
The asterisk (*) will match zero or more characters within a word or at the end of a word. A search for “Ch*ter” would match “Charter”, “Character”, and “Chapter”. When used at the end of a word, such as “Temp*”, it will match all suffixes “Temptation”, “Temple” and “Temporary”.
Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search.
Back to topNo problem! Please contact us with any questions you have about Find Articles.
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