Explore help

Using the Explore service

What is Explore?

Explore is a one-stop service solution for the discovery and delivery of printed and electronic resources. You can search for material within a single resource or across a range of resources simultaneously. Your choice of resources includes:

• All resources: Search everything in Explore
• Library catalogue: Printed and electronic book and journal titles from the UCL library catalogue
• Journal titles: Journal titles to which UCL Library provides access, print and electronic
• Journal articles: A remotely-held catalogue of millions of electronic journal articles and other full-text e-resources (see further details below)
• Databases: Electronic databases of bibliographic and related materials
• Digital collections: UCL Library Services’ digital collections
• UCL Discovery: Open access documents from UCL’s publications repository
• UCL Exam papers: Electronic copies of UCL exam papers
• Archives catalogue: UCL’s archives catalogue
• UCL Reading Lists: Links to lists of resources by course name or code
• Digital Education Resource Archive (DERA): Documents published electronically in the areas of education, training and skills
• UCL Research Data: content from the UCL Research Data Repository

A search for journal articles and other full-text resources in Explore will find results from a wide range of sources. In some cases, though, users may prefer to search UCL's subscription databases individually, particularly where some of the content of a database is not covered in Explore. List of databases whose content is not covered by Explore.

Performing basic searches

You can search very easily using Explore. Just type one or more words you are looking for and hit Enter or click the [magnifying glass] button.

NOTE: Explore assumes that you are searching for all the words you type unless OR or NOT are specified between the words and phrases.

Once you are familiar with the basic Explore search, you might want to try doing more with the search panel or use the Advanced search option. Both of these options offer numerous features for making your searches more precise and enable you to get results that are more useful. For library catalogue material, you can also Browse through certain indexes.

You can do more than just a simple keyword search with the search box. Try the following options to get the best results for your search:

• Searching for a phrase
• Searching for any specified words or phrases
• Searching using a DOI
• Searching using an ISSN
• Searching using an ISBN
• Excluding words or phrases
• Searching using wildcard characters
• Grouping terms within a query
• Selecting a search resource
• Browsing the library catalogue

Searching for a phrase

To search for a phrase, type double quotation marks around the phrase. You can combine both words and phrases in your search.

NOTE: If you do not enclose the phrase with quotation marks, the system will find items that contain the individual words in the phrase, regardless of whether these words are located next to each other in the order specified.

For example, to search for global warming as one term, type the following in the search box:

“global warming”

Searching for any specified words or phrases

You can search for items that contain at least one of the words or phrases you type in the search box. To do so, type OR between the words or phrases.
NOTE: If you search for words or phrases without specifying OR or NOT, Explore assumes that you are searching for all the specified words or phrases.
For example, to search for items with the word Irish or the word Celtic, type the following in the search box:

irish OR celtic

NOTE: To use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) within search phrases, you must enter them in uppercase letters. Otherwise, Explore will consider them as part of the query.

Searching using a DOI

To search for a specific article using its DOI, type the full DOI into the search bar and click Search. If your DOI search doesn't bring back any results, try searching for the title or ISSN of the journal as we may hold it in print format.

Searching using an ISSN

Searching on a journal's ISSN will retrieve results for both the overall title and any articles available electronically. To search using an ISSN, enter the full number (including hyphen) in the search bar and click Search.

Searching using an ISBN

Searching by a book's ISBN is a good way to find a specific edition or version. To search using an ISBN, enter the 10- or 13-digit number into the search bar and click Search.

Excluding words or phrases

You can exclude items that contain specific words or phrases. To do so, type NOT and then type the word or phrase to exclude.

NOTE: If you search for words or phrases without specifying OR or NOT, Explore assumes that you are searching for all the specified words or phrases.

For example, to search for items with the word Celtic and exclude any of these items with the word Irish, type the following in the search box:

celtic NOT irish

Searching using wildcard characters

You can include wildcard characters in your searches as follows:

? Enter a question mark to perform a single character wildcard search. For example, to search for records that contain the strings woman, women and so forth type:

wom?n

* Enter an asterisk to perform a multiple character wildcard search. For example, to search for records that contain strings, such as culture, cultural and culturally type:

cultur*

Grouping terms within a query

You can use parentheses to group terms within a query. For example, to search for Shakespeare and either tragedy or sonnet, type the following in the search box:
shakespeare (tragedy OR sonnet)

Selecting a search resource

The search resource defines where the system should perform the search. The default search resource is All resources (see the What is Explore? section above) but you can change the scope of your search by selecting a different resource from the drop-down list.

Browsing the library catalogue

To browse certain indexes of the UCL library catalogue, click on ‘…’ (Show more) in the top menu, then select ‘Browse’. You can browse the following indexes:

• Subject - e.g. stars; russia history
• Author - lastname, firstname e.g. dostoyevsky, fyodor ; british broadcasting corporation
• Title - e.g. tale of two cities (omit initial articles: a, the, le, etc.)Note that subsequent articles should be included in a browse search.  (i.e 'Cat in the hat', not 'Cat in hat')
• Shelfmark - e.g. anthropology a 2 (UCL shelf location)

In the browse results list, click on the entry you wish to see and this will be displayed in the brief results list as below, unless there is only one entry, in which case a detailed display will be shown.

Using the brief results

The brief results display all the items that match your search query. For each item, the following information displays:

• Resource Type: The format of the item, such as book, article, journal and so forth
• Title: Clicking the title displays information about the item
• Author, creator, and date: The author, creator and publication date of the item
• Actions icons: Click to save or email the citation, or to add or remove the record from your favourites.
• Availability link: Clicking here provides links to full text (if available) or shows the location of the item in the library.

Refining your results

To the left of the brief results list are various options for refining the results of your search.
You can refine your search by including or excluding the following 'facets' which group results together under common characteristics.

• Show only - use this to limit to either physical items or electronic resources
• Type - if, for example, you were looking only for books, you could use this facet
• Library - use this to limit to items held in a particular UCL library
• New Records - use this limit to restrict results to items added to in the last seven, 30 and 90 days.
• Topic - based on descriptors in the results themselves
• Date
• Author
• Language
• Collection

NOTE: Facets only display when it is possible for you to refine your search by using them.

For some facets the first few options are shown immediately, but to see all options you can use the ‘Show more' button. 

To include multiple values, click to the left of them, and to exclude a certain value, click to the right of it, as shown here:

Saving records / Favourites

The Favourites area allows you to save and organize items that you find during your Explore session. To access the Favourites, click the Saved items link in the login menu at the top of the page.
This section includes:

• Saving items to Favourites
• Removing items from Favourites
• Managing labels
• Managing items

Saving items to Favourites

When you select the pin icon for an item in the search results, the system highlights the icon and adds the item to the Saved records area, unlabelled.

NOTE: You must sign in to save items to Favourites for future sessions.

Removing items from Favourites

To remove an item from Favourites, select the pin icon next to the item in the Favourites area.

Managing labels

Favourites uses labels to group saved items together.  From the Favourites area, you can perform the following operations on saved items:

• Add, edit or remove label – click on the text or pencil icon below the item
• View all items with a particular label – click on the label at the right hand side

Managing items

From the Favourites area, you can select a number of items using tick boxes and then perform the following operations on items:

• Add or remove labels
• Unpin (remove from Favourites)
• E-mail - e-mail the selected items
• Print - print the selected items
• Export citation – in a range of formats

Using queries, alerts and RSS feeds

This section includes:

• What is a query?
• What is an alert?
• Activating RSS feeds

What is a query?

A query is a word or phrase you specify in the search panel to request information. You can do the following with queries:

• View queries and results for the current session (click ‘Search history’ from the login menu at the top right)
• Save a query from the current session in order to use it later
• Activate alerts on your saved queries so that they will provide you with updated results from queries
• Activate RSS feeds to receive updates for your favourite queries - for more information see Activating RSS feeds

Viewing and saving queries

If you are signed in, you can save a query by clicking the Save query link, which appears at the top of the results list. You can access your saved and session queries by clicking the ‘Search history’ option from the login menu.

This area contains the following folders:

• Search history - this folder lists all of the queries that you have performed in the current session
• Saved searches - this folder lists all of the queries and alerts that you have saved

NOTE: If you are not signed in, your queries are available only during the current session

You can run a saved query yourself, or you can set it as an alert that runs automatically at scheduled times and sends you new results by e-mail.

What Is an Alert?

An alert is a process that runs your query automatically at scheduled times and sends you new results via e-mail.

Viewing and activating alerts

To view the list of alerts, click the Saved Searches tab. To configure an alert for a saved query, click the alarm bell icon next to that query.  You will be alerted by email when new results are available in that search query. 

Activating RSS Feeds

Syndicated content, otherwise known as Really Simple Syndication (RSS), is a popular way to distribute information from web sites. For example, using RSS, a news site or a blog can automatically feed its news articles or entries to a group of subscribers.
RSS feeds in Explore are used to notify you of new items found by the query. RSS feeds can be activated from either the search results or the Saved Searches tab. All you need is to have an RSS reader installed on your computer.

If your browser supports RSS, click the RSS button. A window from which you can subscribe to the RSS feeds opens. Follow the instructions in the window.
If your browser does not support RSS, right-click the RSS button, copy the URL, and paste it into the RSS reader.

Databases not covered, or partially covered, in Explore

The content of the databases below is not included, or is only partly included, in Explore. Some results from these databases will appear in Explore, but for a comprehensive search please search the databases individually.

• America: History & Life
• American Film Index Catalog
• Art & Architecture Source
• CINAHL Plus
• Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source
• EBSCO eBooks Collection
• EconLit
• Film Index International
• Historical Abstracts
• Library & Information Science Source
• Nexis UK
• PEP - Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing
• PsycExtra
• Safari
• SPORTDiscus

Databases for which you need to be logged in

Some databases require you to be logged in to Explore to include their search results. Please see our list in the "Your account in Explore" tab.