Understanding OneSearch

OneSearch will allow you to discover resources, and items owned by St. Mary's, and USMAI institutions. It addition to physical items, it also helps users find articles from a growing number of resources in addition to some of our databases.

Searching the Catalog

Most times people and staff will refer the the catalog as "One Search" this is the platform that you will be using to search up resources from St. Mary's and beyond.

What does OneSearch actually search?

OneSearch will allow you to discover resources, and items owned by St. Mary's, and USMAI institutions. It addition to physical items, it also helps users find articles from a growing number of resources in addition to some of our databases.

Getting started...

You can access this by clicking St. Mary's catalog OR USMAI Catalog on the library homepage:

To search for books, print materials (bound journals, microfilm, current newspapers, DVDs), online journals, or Video/Film you can toggle between the buttons on the catalog search page. There is a drop down menu to select where you will be searching, the following explains each option:

Everything -- includes St. Mary's items, USMAI items, and items that are outside of the collections that can be requested through ILL.

Articles & More -- includes full-text articles.

St. Mary's Catalog -- includes items available through St. Mary's both physical and online items.

USMAI Catalog -- includes items from partners around the state of Maryland; these materials must be requested to be sent to our campus and can take about a week to arrive.  However, this is a free service for SMCM students, faculty, and staff!

Course Reserves -- includes items that instructors have put on reserve for their students, these items are held behind the circulation desk.

After selecting the which option to choose either St. Mary's, USMAI Catalog, or Everything, you'll see the Advanced Search button/page.  It has a LOT of options, but we can keep things simple with choosing "title" and  "contains" or "author/creator" and "contains."

Enter the search terms or title if you know it:

Here the item is showing that it is Available in the stacks. You'll want to click on the item record to view all the details of the title.

The full item record will show the call number, availability, and call number location. The red box shows that the item is available in the stacks and its call number. The information between the two purple stars shows other institutions that have a copy of the item in their own collections.

Remember items may belong to any of the following collections, which are shelved separately from the main stacks:

• Archives
• Popular Reading
• Maryland
• Oversized
• Reference/Ready Reference
• Special Collections

Additionally, items may have statuses indicating they are unavailable for check-out:

• Items that are non-circulating will have a status of "Not loanable", it will still say the item is available, which means it is available on the shelves but it cannot be checked out because it's status is "Not loanable."
• Items that are "out of library" mean they are checked out. They will show that they are on loan until a certain date.

If in doubt, refer to a librarian!