NORA Help Text
NORA Power Search is the new place to start your research using the collections provided by Northumbria University Library.
Using NORA Power Search you are able to:
- Use a single search box to get fast results from across a wide and reliable range of quality academic resources;
- Search for print and electronic material at the same time;
- Quickly refine and filter your search results;
- Easily limit your search to items with full-text online;
- Set up an RSS feed for your search;
- And much more – new features and functionality are continually being developed and added to the service.
NORA Power Search uses new ‘web-scale discovery’ technology and is powered by the Serials Solutions Summon software.
You can find a wide range of resources to which the Library subscribes through NORA Power Search, as well as the material included in the Library catalogue. You will therefore find print journals and books, as well as electronic journals, articles, newspapers, e-books and references from electronic databases all in the same place.
Content from our resources is being added to the service all the time and in future will also include the University’s institutional repository, Northumbria Research Link.
What is not in NORA Power Search?
Although the majority of the material to which the Library subscribes will be found by NORA Power Search there are some resources which are not included. These are resources which are not participating in the NORA Power Search service and which you will need to access directly
using one of these routes the A-Z List of Databases, Browse Resources by Subject or the Find E-Journals by Title on the NORA page.
For more information about these options see the What other routes to resources are available to me? section below.
How do I use NORA Power Search?
NORA Power Search is very easy to use. Enter your search terms into the search box and then click the ‘Find It Fast’ button to get results. You can then narrow them down using the options under ‘Refine your search’ on the left-hand side of the results screen. SEE Refining Your Search
If you want more detail about how to use NORA Power Search then SEE Search tips
What other routes to resources are available to me?
NORA Power Search is a good place to start when you are beginning to look for information on a subject. You will get a wide range of quality results, often from sources that you wouldn’t think of searching.
In addition to NORA Power Search there are several other options for finding resources
- Library catalogue - If you know the specific book or journal title you are looking for this is a good place to start.
- A to Z list of databases - If you know the name of the individual database you wish to search then you can find it here.
- Browse Resources by Subject - You can find out which resources are available in your subject area by looking here.
- Find E-Journals by Title - You can search for a specific electronic journal or browse a list here.
- Northumbria Research Link - You can search the research output of Northumbria’s own research staff and students using this service.
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You can simply enter your search terms straight into the NORA Power Search box and click ‘Find it fast’ to get results which you can then refine. However, you may want to use the following search techniques to make your search more specific from the start.
Use quotation marks to find specific phrases (words next to each other), e.g. “environmental education”. You can combine phrase searching with boolean operators too e.g. "teacher training " OR "educator training" to find either phrase.
SEE Boolean searching
Boolean operators such as AND, NOT, OR should always be IN CAPS.
Boolean search operators can be used within NORA Power Search. By default NORA will use AND to combine your search terms.
To expand the number of results you get use OR, e.g. dogs OR cats will give you results that contain either term.
In a query containing both AND and OR operators, AND operators are processed or evaluated first, and then the OR operators are evaluated. If a query contains parentheses, operators within parentheses are processed first, and then precedence rules are processed from left to right.
To exclude terms from your results use NOT, e.g. dogs NOT cats in a search will ensure that your results do not contain the word cat.
Proximity searching
Proximity searches limit result sets to terms within a specified number of words from each other. To perform a proximity search, enclose your search terms in quotes and use the tilde (~) followed by a number indicating the distance you want to allow between the search terms.
For example: "yeast bread"~10 finds material where "yeast" and "bread" appear within 10 words of each other.
NOTE: proximity searching does not take the order of the search terms into account. A search on "boron nanotubes potassium"~6 will yield results in which the three search terms appear in various orders.
NORA Power Search uses the truncation symbols ? and * , though they cannot be used as the first character of a search.
Use the question mark ? to match one character within a word, e.g. organi?ation.
Use the asterisk * with the stem of a word to match multiple variations of that stem, e.g. librar* will find library, libraries, librarian etc.
The asterisk * can also be used to match multiple characters within a word e.g. ch*ter would find chapter, charter or character.
Once you have your results you may refine them further by using the options on the left-hand side of the screen.
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Limit results to those which have full-text online, those from scholarly publications (such as journals) and exclude newspaper material. |
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Choose particular types of material using this option. Click more options to display all the content types found for your search and to exclude those you do not want. |
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Refine your results further by subject. Click more options to see all the subject terms for your search, or to exclude those that do not interest you. | |
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Use the publication date slider to look at results from the dates that interest you (the bigger the bar the more results have been found in that year), or, if you prefer, you can add a specific date range to the boxes instead. | |
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Use the language option to restrict results to a particular language.
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Use the Library Location option to select only material from the Northumbria research repository- Northumbria Research Link |
E-mailing, printing and exporting search results
Use the ‘Save this item’ icon 
next to each record to save results to a temporary folder. Please be aware that the items will be cleared once you leave NORA Power Search. Once you have done this you can then click on ‘Saved items’ at the bottom of the screen to e-mail, print, or export your results into EndNote.
There is currently a problem with the display of multiple authors in exported citations, and they may not appear in the correct order. Until a solution to this issue has been found, you should check the order of the authors as they appear on the original article.
Saving your search as an RSS feed
Once you have completed your search you can continue to receive results for it via an RSS feed. You will receive an update whenever new content is added that matches your search criteria.
To do this right click the RSS symbol 
at the top right hand side of your results and then click ‘Copy Link Location’. This will have temporarily saved your search’s RSS feed URL. You can then go to your RSS feed reader and paste this into the add subscription option as you would normally.
Please note that in order to do this you will need to have set up an RSS reader account with a service such as Bloglines or Google Reader.
Advanced search enables you to specify which fields you would like to search, and can be used to specify results from certain authors, publications, or even particular volumes or issues of a journal. It is also possible to use Advanced Search to choose which content types appear in your results.
- How can I find a PRINT journal title, rather than articles from a journal using NORA Power Search?
Use Advanced Search and enter the title of the journal in the field “With these words in the title”, then select Journal/eJournal from the “Show content type” dropdown menu. Select "Show items in the library catalogue". Connecting to "Check Availability" takes you to the library catalogue record.
OR
You can search the Library catalogue directly. - How can I find a link to the whole eJournal title, rather the articles from the journal using NORA Power Search?
Use Advanced Search and enter the title of the journal in the field “With these words in the title”, then select "Web Resource” from the "Show content type" dropdown menu. Select "Show items in the library catalogue". Connecting to "Check Availability" takes you to the library catalogue record.
OR
Use our Find E-Journals by Title page - How can I rearrange results by date?
There is a dropdown box near the top right of the page where you can choose to arrange your results by date (newest to oldest, or oldest to newest) or by relevance. You can also restrict the timeframe of your results by using the Publication Date slider or boxes. - What is “Add results beyond your library’s collection”?
This option, available in both basic and advanced searching, allows you to look at content from other libraries who use the same search service as NORA Power Search.
Please note that results found using this option may not be available to users from Northumbria University. - How do I just search for books using NORA Power Search?
You can narrow your search down to books by using the “Content Type” filter on the left, and ticking the box next to “Book/eBook”. You may also use Advanced Search to search only for books by selecting “Book/eBook” from the “Show content type” dropdown menu.
OR
You can search the Library catalogue directly. - Why do some of my results show “Check Availability”?
When an item shows “Check Availability”, NORA Power Search will redirect you to the Library catalogue to see how you might access the full text. If “Full Text Online” is displayed in NORA Power Search, clicking on the link will take you straight to the resource. - Can I preview the abstract for an item in my results?
Yes, if an abstract is available. If you hover your mouse over the item, you can click the magnifying glass icon at the top right. This will show you a short abstract, and details of the resource in which it can be found.
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