RELS-886: Religion & Technology

Omni is our academic search tool that enables you to search for books, journals, articles, videos and much more, all from one interface. 

Omni enables you to search different scopes of information collections: locally at Queen's, consortially with 13 other partner libraries, and beyond, via the vendor's vast database of electronic resources. Books that are not available at Queen's can be requested through interlibrary loan.

The Omni search box is featured on the Queen's Library homepage. 

• You are starting your research and want to assess the resources available on your topic
• You want to find resources in a variety of formats (i.e. books and articles)
• You are searching for articles on an interdisciplinary topic, where information could be found in various databases
• You are looking for an exact known item
• A comprehensive article search is not required

You will be prompted to sign in. Signing in will:

• help optimize your search
• provide access to special features like saving favourites, view search history, and create alerts
• access your account to check loans and requests and renew materials
• provide authentication for licensed resources

Quickly conduct either natural language or complex Boolean searches across the entire content collection you have selected. 

Basic Searching in Omni

The default search in Omni is a basic search. Enter one or more keywords into the Omni search box, choose the scope you wish to search (the scope is set to Queen's-only as a default), then click the search button. 

• basic search supports the use of Boolean operators: AND, OR or NOT,
• boolean operators must be entered in uppercase (e.g. race AND gender).
• to search for a specific phrase, place quotation marks around the phrase, otherwise AND is assumed between each word.  (example: "global warming").

Once you have your initial search results, you can fine-tune them by using the filters on the left side of the screen.

Advanced Searching

Use the advanced search option to obtain more precise search results.

• resource type will limit your search to a specific format or material type, such as book or ebooks
• drop-down options within the Advanced Search screen help you limit your search to specific fields and/or a combination of fields (author, title, subject, call number).
• specify how your search words must be reflected in the search field e.g. "contains", "starts with" or "is (exact)."  
• limit the results by date or language. 

Omni provides you with three different content collections to search:

1. Queen's: physical and online resources at Queen's
2. Queen's + Omni Libraries: adds the physical holdings* of our 13 partner university libraries
3. Add results beyond Queen's collection: Accessed when you select this option under Modify your results. "Beyond" refers to a vast collection of electronic resources contained in the Omni vendor database

*At this time, only print books may be borrowed via Interlibrary loan from our Omni partners

Apply filters to fine-tune your search results.  Filters are located on the left hand side of the Omni search page, after you have performed a search.  

To select a filter, move your mouse to the left of the filter you wish to select and a check box will appear. You can then select it (or deselect it by moving your mouse to the right hand side of the filter). After selecting a filter, be sure to click the green "Apply Filters" button to activate the filter.

From the Omni search page, select the "Journal Search" option near the top of the page and enter the title of the journal (or magazine or newspaper) in the search box. (To enlarge the screenshot, right-click on the image below and open in a new tab.)

Select the title of the journal from the list of results. From there you can access the full text (if the journal is online) or search inside for articles only from within the particular journal, directly from the record:

Omni offers a number of tools that help you organize, save, or cite your research. Examples include:

	Citation icon	Select one of ten different citation styles and generate a citation to the item
	Envelope icon	Email a record to the item
	Pushpin icon	Save this item to your list of favourites in Omni
	Citation trails	Lead to sources that cite the work or to references cited in the item
	Ellipsis icon	Shows action options including citation, email, permalink, export to citation managers and print record

Related Reading

Starting from an article of interest, related reading provides other relevant articles for the same topic. 

(To enlarge this image, please right-select the image and open it in a New Tab)

Virtual Browse

Discover other books at Queen's on the same topic by browsing a virtual book shelf. Available in Omni records for print monographs, scroll to the bottom of the book's record to discover other print monographs that would be shelved with the item.

(To enlarge this image, please right-select the image and open it in a New Tab)

Omni includes content from the various research databases to which Queen's University Library subscribes but not everything is included. If you are looking for information on a very specific topic, or a topic that is subject specific, it is recommended that you search databases that specialize in that subject area for more thorough results.

A link to database search is available from the library homepage or consult the relevant library research guide to determine the recommended databases in your discipline.