Step 3. Plan and Execute Your Search

Sometimes you don't need a comprehensive search, just a quick search to find a few relevant articles. For further information on how to do a quick search, take our Search Skills I- Speedy Searching course. 

Searching in Summon:

Remember: The Summon search box (KRS homepage search box) searches the aggregate content from our licensed databases, journals we subscribe to, and chapters from select ebooks. It doesn't search point of care resources or the print catalogue. 

You can find the Summon search box on the top right corner of the KRS website homepage.

Begin by putting a few keywords into the search box. No need to use "And" or "Or" here. It's best to start broad and add in more concepts if you need to get more specific. For example, we can search for cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety.

Clicking search will take you to the results page. You can easily limit the results by clicking one or more limiters on the left hand toolbar. 

You can also check to see if we have the full text of an article in our collection through Summon. Simply put the title of the article (or include the author if the title is not specific enough) and click search. If we have the article in our collection, the title will appear in the first couple of results. If not, you will have to order it though our Request an Article form.  

Basic Search in MEDLINE:

Make sure the MEDLINE Basic Search is selected. As with Summon, no need to use "And" or "Or". Just include relevant keywords and click search. MEDLINE tends to be sensitive to "stop" words (to, all, for, the) so we've left out the "for" in this search. 

You can use the limiters in the box below to narrow your search by date, publication type, and more.  

Now that we've completed a basic search, let's conduct a more comprehensive search, starting by creating a search strategy. 

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