UEF Primo is the library's own search engine. At the beginning of this quick guide you will find instructions for the basic use of UEF Primo: login, loan renewal, remote access, etc. Then follow tips on information retrieval and search techniques used in UEF Primo. The guide also includes examples of how to find different kind of material using UEF Primo - books, articles, theses, etc. At the bottom of the page there is a link to video guidance for UEF Primo.
Learn more about login, loan renewal, requesting books, remote access, browser technical requirements and many more tips from Frequently asked questions about UEF Primo.
- Characters are not case-sensitive. You may type proper names in lowercase or in capitals. For example, search term London and london brings the same results.
- The truncation mark is *. The truncation mark (asterisk) replaces one or more characters:
cultur* = culture, culture-bound, cultural, etc.
ecolog* = ecological, ecological analysis, etc.
You can also truncate the keyword from the beginning of the word:
*ship = friendship, ownership, etc.
- UEF Primo can inflect the English language, e.g. plural forms can be found automatically (search child also finds plural children). Keywords in Finnish always have to be truncated to find plural and inflection forms.
- Put phrases in quotation marks. Within quotation marks, the search words remain exactly in the order in which they are written, and the meaning of the phrase is not lost. Examples:
“global warming”
“social media”
Unfortunately, truncating the keywords inside the phrase does not work perfectly in UEF-Primo. If you have to truncate the words inside the phrase, truncate only the last word of the phrase. There is no need to use a hyphen within the phrase: a search for “human-animal relationship” brings the same amount of results as “human animal relationship”.
- Wildcard ? replaces one character: search wom?n finds woman and women. Note that with the wildcard at the end of the word, the basic form of the word is not found. For example, search love? can't find the word love, but lover.
- The proximity operator does not work in UEF Primo.
- Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) need to be written in capital letters. Read more about combining search words below.
There are four search groups in UEF Primo:
Library Catalog = library's printed and electronic books and journals, dissertations, databases
International Articles = International full-text articles and article references
All e-resources = all electronic materials: publications and databases
Everything = all these together
Unless you change the search group, your search will default to Library collections.
In basic search, you can perform command searches using the operators AND, OR, and NOT. Always write operators with CAPITALS.
Boolean operator AND is used in the basic search by default. This means that you will receive the same results by using either the following searches:
students well-being
students AND well-being
OR-operator combines search terms that refer to the same meaning. Each search result contains at least one of the terms:
elderly OR aged OR "old people"
To specify the order in which the operations are implemented, you can enclose search terms and their operators in parentheses . Information within parentheses is read first, then information outside parentheses is read next. OR-operations must always be completed first:
(elderly OR aged) AND welfare
The operator NOT is always performed the last:
cycling AND safety NOT helmet
Open the UEF Primo Advanced Search Form from the link next to the basic search window.
- Choose which collection you want to search: Library Catalog, International articles, All e-resources or Everything.
- Choose the search field (for example, search in only the Subject field).
- Type down your search terms. Use operator OR (in CAPITALS) to combine alternatives, synonyms, or broader and narrower terms.
- Select a Boolean operator (AND, OR, NOT) to combine the search field entries. This search will give you results containing words cartoon / comics, AND women / gender.
NOTE! An AND operator that combines search lines is generally worth letting it be; this is how the search logic works correctly.
For more search rows to merge with the AND operator, click Add a new line.
Aligning search words to different search fields will refine your search. There are six search fields: Any field, Title, Author/Creator, Subject, ISBN and ISSN. You can select the field where you want to find the keyword /s from the drop-down list. The default is Any field, which fetches words from all fields and therefore brings the most search results.
All words that appear in a search need not always be found in the same field. In an example search, words in the first line are searched in the Subject field, Title field in the second line.
The choice of search language in UEF Primo depends on which search groups you are searching for: library catalog, international articles or all material. Select the language as follows:
Search Group Library Collections: The most functional search languages are Finnish and English. You can also use Swedish if you are looking for Swedish literature in particular.
Printed books in all languages are saved in the database using Finnish language keywords. Printed books in English also have keywords in English. Most e-books have keywords only in English. All books in other languages are saved to the database using only Finnish keywords, not for example Russian or German keywords. Language limitation is easy to do in the result list afterwards.
Books in Russian can be found with book titles using either the Cyrillic alphabet or transliteration. Keywords are only in Finnish.
Search Group International Articles: The most functional search language is English. There are other languages you can try, but the most results come from using English keywords and then limiting the search results afterwards to the desired language.
Search group Everything: The most functional search languages are Finnish and English. Since the search for all material is not only the articles, but printed books described in Finnish, these two languages work best. Again, limiting the desired language can be done afterwards.
NOTE! UEF Primo knows how to inflect the English language and thus automatically find, for example, the plural forms of nouns and different spellings (child - children, woman - women, humor - humour, etc.). You should truncate the search words in Finnish, as UEF Primo does not understand or inflect Finnish.
After the search is done, you will see the refining filters on the right. You can narrow the search result by e.g. availability, resource type, subject, publication date and language. You can choose as many filters as you want. In example the filters are following:
- years 2000-2002
- excluding subject "Science & Technology" as irrelevant
- Peer-reviewed journals
- language English
- Available online
If you want to keep the chosen filters for the duration of the session, click Remember All filters.
Tips:
- Refining your search result to Peer-reviewed journals is useful especially when looking for sources to support your own research. In peer review, the publication has been reviewed by experts in the field and you no longer have to consider the reliability of the source.
- If you limit the results to Open access publications only, please note that there are a lot of good, so called paid articles which are then missing out. Therefore, use this filter with discretion.
- When the search query and limiters are in place, save the search query by selecting Save query below the search. This will allow you to return to your search and its results later.
Closing the browser will lose searches and found references if not recovered. Saving searches and search results works like this:
- Log in to UEF Primo with your own UEF-username. Login is possible once you have registered as a library customer. Read more about registering
- You can then save individual references to your account by pressing the Add this item icon (the needle icon) in the reference. To recover more than one reference, choose the references you want from the result list and press the needle icon at the top of the list. You can organize your own references into folders by giving them tags.
- Search queries can be saved by pressing the link below the search query (Save Query). For saved searches, you can add an alert, which will send you an email when new references match your search appear in the database.
- Searches can also be saved through search history: select the clock icon (Go to search history) in the top bar and save the searches you want. Please note that the search history will be cleared when you close the browser.
Saved searches and references can be found under the needle icon at the top, as well as in Favourites behind your name (upper right corner).
NOTE! Time-out is set to six hours. This means that if you are not using the service for six hours, you will be logged out of UEF Primo.
Watch the video (2:33) Saving searches and search results (Youtube)
- Enter the name of the book or words from the name and click "Library Catalog".
- Do not use a single word only, you may get too many incorrect results.
- You may also enter last names of authors to make your search more precise.
- Books and serial publications can also be searched with ISBN and ISSN numbers with or without hyphens. If you can't find the result you want with a hyphen, try the search again without a hyphen.
Examples:
wheater's histology
environmental chemistry manahan
- Enter keywords related to your topic in Finnish or in English and click "Library Catalog".
- You may truncate the keywords with an asterisk to search for word variations.
- Place phrases in quotes to make your search more precise.
- Use the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT for the search words combination (see “Combining keywords in basic search” and “Combining keywords in advanced search)
Examples:
climat* chang* agricultur* europe*
"cardiovascular diseases" AND (aged OR elder*)
- Use the menus on the right side of the search result list to limit your search further.
- Enter the title of the article or words from the title and click International Articles.
- You may also enter last names of authors to make your search more precise.
- If you know the exact title of the article, you can apply the search to the Title field.
Examples:
measuring social capital harpham
"The librarian in Rowling's Harry Potter series" (Title field)
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Enter keywords related to your topic in English and click "International Articles".
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You may truncate the keywords with an asterisk to search for word variations.
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Place phrases in quotes to make your search more precise. Within a phrase, you can truncate only the last word.
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You may also combine the keywords with Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT (see “Combining keywords in basic search” and “Combining keywords in advanced search"). The easiest way is to use the Advanced Search form.
Examples:
climat* chang* agricultur* europe*
"cardiovascular diseases" AND "risk factors" AND (aged OR elder*)
(cartoon* OR comic*) AND (women OR girl* OR gender) AND (hero* OR superhero*)
- Use the menu on the right side of the search result list to limit your search further.
- If you are outside of the campus network, log in to UEF Primo using your UEF IDs. Problems? Read Remote access to electronic resources
- Search the article(s) you need (see instructions above)
- Click the link 'Näytä PDF/View PDF'
- If the above-mentioned link does not exist, click the link 'Available online' and check the Full text availability. There might be several links onwards, choose any of them.
Not all the articles shown in UEF Primo are available online. If you want to see just the online articles, refine you results by Availability. Full text of many Open Access articles do not link to UEF Primo, but can be found using Google Scholar.
- Select "Journal search" and enter the beginning of the journal name or journal ISSN.
- The journal name in full appears on the list below the search box.
- Click the name of the journal. At the same time, you can check which volumes are available.
- Select "Database search" and enter the beginning of the database name.
- The database name in full appears on the list below the search box.
- If you don't know the name of the database that suits you, you can browse databases by topic from the menu on the left side.
Through UEF Primo you can access some newspaper services.
PressReader: International newspapers. Archive for the last 3 months.
ePress: Finnish newspapers. NB! Does not work remotely. 5 concurrent user restriction. Archive for the past two years.
Learn more about searching newspapers and magazines
- Online dissertations, UEF master's theses (starting from the beginning of the year 2012) are stored in UEF eRepository.
- You may search for theses and dissertations (also the older ones) in UEF Primo: search by the name of the theses, by the author or by the subject (refine your search to Dissertations)
Read more about Thesis retrieval
If you don't find the specific book, article or other publication that you need from UEF Primo, try these:
- use Google to search for an article or a thesis
- order a book, an article or a thesis as an interlibrary loan (the service is subject to a charge )