Omni offers enhanced discovery and delivery of information resources at Queen's, our partner institutions, and beyond. You can access multiple formats including books, articles, videos, maps, government documents, music, data sets, open access materials, and more. You can discover materials that are not available at Queen's (excluding e-books) but that you can freely request either within Omni or through interlibrary loan.
Please note: Omni times out after 30 minutes of inactivity, resetting itself to the default search page.
To work from off-campus, log in to the Off-Campus Access link on the library homepage. This is the gateway to full-text library content. The Omni Sign in link is to manage your account and enable access to full text if you haven't already logged in. If you search Omni and click a link to an online resource without Off-Campus login, you will be prompted to give your NetID.
Sign in to update your profile, check loans and requests, renew materials, access Favourites
Use Omni to find:
If you find it difficult to narrow your results, consider using a disciplinary database as recommended in the subject-specific Research Guides.
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Operator
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Used for
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What it Does
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Example
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AND |
when you want to find material containing two or more concepts using AND between keywords means that both terms must appear somewhere in the record |
narrows your search |
A search for <benefits AND oil sands> would only retrieve those documents containing both the word benefits and the phrase " oil sands." |
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OR |
when you want to find material containing either or any of the keywords use OR to combine synonyms and related terms |
broadens your search |
A search for <food scarcity OR food deserts, health geography> would retrieve information on either concept. |
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NOT |
use NOT to exclude a concept or word from the search use NOT sparingly, if at all, because you could end up excluding useful search results (e.g. articles or books that discuss both concepts) |
narrows your search |
A search for <NGO NOT governments> would exclude any results which contain the word "governments." |
| Phrases | Use quotation marks around phrases |
"return on investments" "climate change" "developing countries" |
Nested Searching is used whenever you have more than one Boolean operator, such as AND and OR, in a search statement, it is necessary to separate them with parentheses. This is known as a "nested searching." Here's an example:
(shortage OR scarcity) AND ("natural resources" OR "ground water")
Nested searching tells the database the proper order in which to search for the keywords. Operations enclosed in parentheses are performed first followed by the operators outside the parentheses.
Note: Most databases use American spelling, so, when applicable, you should search for both versions of a word (e.g. use labour OR labor to retrieve either results for either spelling).