Search methods & techniques: Use sEURch

sEURch is the library's own search engine. A search in sEURch returns journal articles, books, book chapters, journals, etc. You search the collections of the libraries of Erasmus University Rotterdam: the University Library, the library of the ISS in The Hague, the Rotterdamsch Leeskabinet, the library of Erasmus University College and the Sanders Law Library. In sEURch, you also search the collections of libraries in the Netherlands and libraries worldwide.

There are times when you already know the article you are looking for because you have a reference. For example, a reference to a journal article in a book or report you've read or from the reference list attached to a Wikipedia article. Your lecturers also tell you about relevant articles.

Every scholarly publication has a bibliography that lists sources consulted or used as supporting evidence by the author and allows readers to find and read these sources for themselves.

You can use sEURch, the search engine of the University Library, to look for a journal article that you already have the details of. To find a journal article, go to the library's homepage. Type some words from the title and the author's surname in the search box. Click on the magnifying glass to start the search. You can use the refine option on the left to limit the results to articles only. If the article appears in the result list, you can usually access the full text of the article by clicking on the orange View PDF or View full text button.

Watch the video How to find a journal article in sEURch (1:02) to see an example of finding a journal article in our search engine sEURch.

In addition to tracing books and journal articles that you have references for, sEURch is ideal for discovering articles on a topic. Especially when it is a preliminary search and you have just started to explore a particular topic.

An advantage of sEURch is that you can search a large number of databases all at once. A disadvantage is that the number of results may be too high. You can avoid this by thinking of good keywords and combining these in your search. You can also use the filters to refine your search result and reduce the number of hits.

Watch the video Use sEURch to look for literature by subject (1:53) to see an example of searching and refining.

If a book or journal article is not in the collection of the EUR University Library, there are a few options: 

• You can order it from another library in the Netherlands or abroad. This is called Interlibrary Loan, or ILL. Have you found a book or article in sEURch that one of the EUR libraries does not have in its collection? Then use the "Request item through interlibrary loan" button to request it from another library. Read more about ILL (including the costs) on our library website.
• Search Google Books. With Google Books you can search the full text of books, you can read entire books if they are free of copyright and you might find more recent books (with copyright) which are partially available.
• Check the EUR Research Portal (https://pure.eur.nl/) or the national repository NARCIS. The EUR Research Portal provides access to the academic output of the Erasmus University and makes it available to everyone. NARCIS is the national portal for scholarly information. A single search query lets you consult all the repositories of Dutch universities in one go.

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