Over the winter break, we made an adjustment to our library homepage to more prominently feature our Library Research Center page. It’s designed to present our research and information resources in a way that accommodates people with different levels of search experience and familiarity with our resources. Key features include:

• Quick links to our most popular databases at the top
• Simple searching & advanced searching with the Primo multi-database search system
• Guidance for novice searchers
• Links to in-depth information about our resources, and strategies for specific information needs

To make Library Research Center easier to find, we made it one of the six prominent links on the library homepage. This new link replaces the “Research Databases” link to our A-Z Databases page.

A-Z Databases lists the 100+ databases and online publications we have access to. It has filters and a search function to help find useful databases. We did find that some students misunderstood the nature of the page, assuming it to be a topical search tool rather than a database-finding tool. This sometimes led to erroneous conclusions about the availability of materials on their research topic. Hopefully the more descriptive labels for our other links to A-Z Databases, which can be found in places including the Library Research Center page and in the “Research” menu that appears at the top of almost every library web page, will help reduce confusion.