June 26, 2020, by Emma

NUsearch upgrade – June 2020

The University’s online library discovery tool, NUsearch has been upgraded today with new functionality and a redesigned interface. 

NUsearch has a new look

NUsearch’s new look has been informed by feedback from staff and students and should provide an improved search experience. Read on for more details of the changes.

Simplifying the menu

In the new design, we’ve improved the visibility of the top menu bar and simplified the options.

You’ll notice that the menu options have been re-ordered to display the most popular options first, including Help, Databases, Journals, Digital gallery and Interlibrary loans.

NUsearch top menu

Sign in

Signing in to NUsearch provides a better search experience by delivering more search results and allowing you to request items and check your library account.

To make it easier for you to log in, we’ve increased the size and prominence of this on the homepage. Just look for the pink button.

NUsearch homepage showing the pink Sign in button

Pre-filter your search

We’ve added the option to pre-filter your search from the NUsearch homepage. Simply set your criteria using the three drop down fields under the search box to quickly get to the results you want.

You can use the pre-filters to specify:

the type of resource you want to search such as Articles, Books.

whether you want results that contain all the words in your search or with the exact phrase

which sections of the record to search e.g. title, subject or author/contributor

NUsearch homepage showing the three pre-filter dropdown boxes

Improved search functionality

In addition to changes to the design, we’ve also made changes to the search functionality.

You will no longer see lots of different search options when entering your search terms, such as Library Catalogue, Articles, Research outputs, Digital Gallery and Manuscripts/Archives.

The default search will now return all results, searching for your keywords as broadly as possible across all online and physical library collections.

If you want to narrow your results, you can use existing filters on the right-hand side of the search results page or try the new pre-filters, which allow you to quickly set criteria before you search.

– You can now use voice search in supported browsers.

Voice search

The new version of NUsearch now supports voice search. In browsers that support this feature you will see a microphone icon in the search box.

Microphone icon in the NUsearch search box

To use voice search:

  1. Click on the microphone icon in the search box
  2. Say your search terms
  3. If audio is detected, NUsearch will display the relevant search terms and results

This feature is only available for browsers that support speech recognition including Chrome (Desktop and Android) and Samsung browsers. We hope this will be progressively available in other browsers soon.

Help and support

For more information on the latest upgrade, download the June 2020 release notes (PDF).

If you have any questions or feedback, you can get in touch via:

email at library-helpline@nottingham.ac.uk

our Ask Libraries drop-in sessions

Posted in CollectionsNUsearch