Search Tips

Where to search

The search box is located in the upper right corner of the home page. Advanced search can be reached via the results page after you perform a simple search. You will see options to search within filters on the left by clicking the (+) symbol and to search for collections in the main search bar- click "all of DSpace" and search for community you are seeking. You can then search within that chosen community. 

eCommons is fully indexed by Google and other search engines.

How searching eCommons works.

Default search:

The default eCommons search is keyword, and full text. This means the search engine is looking for your search term(s), or variants, in all of the metadata (title, author, etc.) AND in the full text of documents on eCommons. 

If you do not have a specific search phrase, using multiple keywords will refine results and potentially generate more fruitful results. Search results are displayed in order of relevance by default.

Advanced Search:

You can structure a multi-part question by putting together a series of filters. Available filters appear as a browseable list to the left. 

Search tips

  • All searches on eCommons use word stemming, so common suffixes will be included in the results (for example, a search for work will include results for worked and worker).

  • Phrase searching is supported (quotes around a phrase will search for the entire phrase instead of its component parts. eg: "United States" will search for the phrase "United States" instead of "United" AND "States").

  • In general, to get more results, perform a full text search. That is, do not filter metadata field(s) (such as author, subject, etc.) to search. 

Limitations of searching

Common Roman accents are accepted, but languages that use non-Roman characters will be presented with a uniform, phonetic title, a title in translation or both.