Search Omni to find books, journals, videos and other materials owned by the Library. You can search by keywords, author, title or subject headings.
Subject headings allow you to search for resources on a particular author or topic and are often more productive than keyword searches.
Keyword searches work best if you have multiple concepts or topics and need only a few books.
For a comprehensive subject search, search with subject headings as well as keywords.
Searching Omni
Start with a keyword search, but expect to revise it.
Keyword Searching TIPS
Search Technique |
What It Does |
quotation marks |
Searches for exact phrase |
Truncation * |
Searches for all forms of a word |
Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) |
Lets you broaden or narrow your search |
To find books by a particular author/person, search Omni by author:
To find books about a particular author/person, search Omni by subject heading:
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To find books on a topic, use a keyword search if you do not know the correct subject heading for a topic. Think of the focus (or key) words that describe your topic.
Select useful titles and look at the full record for subject headings.
Examples of subject headings relating to Canadian history:
Keyword Searching
The structure for organizing information has been and continues to be from a western perspective. For this reason, you will need to search various outdated and inappropriate terminology as well as new terminology to find relevant material.
Think of your keywords and then combine them with keywords relating to the concept of Indigenous identity.
General terms: Indigenous, Aboriginal, First Nations, Inuit, Métis, Native, Indian, First Peoples.
Specific terms: Haudenosaunee, Iroquois, Ojibwe, Ojibway, Anishinaabe, Cree, Dene...
Search: (Haudenosaunee OR Iroquois) AND (treaty OR treaties)
Subject Headings
The Library subscribes to a number of e-book packages which can be accessed via Databases. Packages that are of interest to history students are: