• Filtering result lists

  Use the facets displayed to the right of the result list. Choose either material-related facets, in order to limit results to books, to journal articles, to particular publication years, to particular libraries within the Freie Universität library system, to particular languages – or subject-related facets by selecting subject terms or classification codes. Facets can be set to either include or exclude certain parameters, and combinations of facets are possible.
  ♥ Hint: Move the mouse pointer to one of the facets. Check the boxes to the left of a facet option in order to combine two or more options.
  ♦ Note: In Primo, there are static facets for the entire result set (for instance, print and online formats; various material types), and there are dynamic facets, that are generated as result lists are created. Dynamic filters are applied to a maximum of 50,000 hits.

   →  Demo: How can I use facets to filter my results

• Sorting result lists

  The default sorting is by Primo relevance. Primo relevance depends on whether results contain the query terms in the same order as was used in the query, on whether they appear in prominent parts of the results, and on how frequently they turn up.
  
  ♥ Hint: In a list sorted by date, the relevance of the results that appear on top will obviously be reduced. Instead of sorting the results by date, use the date-range facet (by selecting 2016 to 2016, for example); that way, you reduce the amount of hits to the years relevant to your search, and the relevance ranking remains intact.

• Get more relevant results by modifying your query

  Result sets vary in quality depending on the query and the selected scope.

  If your search yields too many results, you should add terms to your query or choose more relevant terms.

  If there are is a very low number of hits, the search maschine will automatically return full-text hits from Articles+. In order to get a higher numer of hits, choose more general query terms, truncate terms, or use English-language terms. Try combining those search strategies in one query, using the operator OR (compare: Composing Queries).

  ♥ Hint: The Primo search engine is programmed to return "smart" results for all kinds of queries. That is why, if a query yields a low number of results in an article search, full-text search is automatically activated, or the result set is extended to include documents that do not contain all query terms or slightly different terms (with other suffixes, for example). In order to deliver optimal search results, the machine depends on your help – by way of optimal queries.

• Get more relevant results by choosing the most appropriate scope for your search

  Is it primarily books and e-books provided by Freie Universität libraries you are looking for? If you select the FU Catalog scope, Primo will return only the required items. You should also select the FU Catalog scope when you are looking for journals provided by Freie Universität libraries.

• Get more relevant results by field-specific queries

In Advanced Search, you can define whether a particular term should be contained in author, title, or publisher fields, for example.

• Get more relevant results for journal-article searches by changing the settings for ranking

  Improve the order in which results for a journal-article search are displayed by selecting a discipline in the Personalize dialog. Your discipline preferences will enter into the ranking mechanism.

Note: Personalizing will only affect the ranking of journal articles in the Articles+ scope.