Introduction to UNC Libraries: Search Tools

Search Tools

Search Engines & Library Search

Just as information is published in different sources, like newspapers, books, and journals, those information sources are searched for and accessed through different search tools. Chances are you have used search engines like Google to search the internet for information. Search engines are excellent tools for finding information like current news, government statistics, company annual reports, consumer health information, and so on. Even Wikipedia can be useful when finding background knowledge on a topic. 

Despite the size of the internet and the vast quantity of information that a search engine can retrieve, there are even greater quantities of information that can't be found through a search engine. The overwhelming majority of published information is still held in libraries and archives around the world.

If you are looking for resources that we have here in the UNC libraries, you will need to search through the main search box on the library homepage. This will not only allow you to see what we have, but it will also allow you to access those sources.  Below are tools that you can use to search the library collections. 

The main search box on the library home page searches both the Catalog and Articles+. It will bring up results for: 

• Books
• Articles
• e-Books
• Film & Media
• subject research guides
• Articles
• Digital Collection
• Special Collections