Summon Help and FAQ

Summon contains a variety of quality information and access to content provided by the University of Cincinnati Library, including books, e-books, reference sources, various types of articles, dissertations, and many other material types. Please note that Summon does not provided access to content of all databases UC subscribes to.

While anyone can use Summon, complete content and full text of the documents is available only to the UC students, faculty, and staff. Please remember to login for off-campus access.

For failed searches Summon provides spelling suggestions. Please refer also to Tips for Online Searching.

Please remember that not everything we license is included in Summon. Browse our databases. Not sure which database to use? Try our Research Guides or ask a librarian.
 

The Advanced Search screen offers a number of ways to limit your search:

• add terms to appear in a certain part of the record (title, author, subject terms, and more)
• select a date range
• limit results to scholarly materials, peer-reviewed items, items available online in full text or items in the library catalog
• exclude certain formats newspaper articles, book reviews or dissertations) from results.

You can also refine your search after you submit it and display results (see How do I work with search results?)

Whether you made search refinements using the Advanced search screen or selected options in the left-hand panel (facets), your filters will "stick" and be applied to future searches. The "Clear filters" link indicates that filters have been applied. To get rid of the previously applies filters click on the "Clear filters" link or on the X in front of it.

• Click "Relevance" if you want to change sorting to most recent itmes first (Date newest).

• Select one or more options in the facets pane to refine your search.

• Hover over the title or the arrow icon to display the preview, which includes the options to cite and email the item.

• For online items click on the title or full text link to get to full text.

• Click the folder icon to save the item to a temporary folder, where you can select a citation style, email your items, or export them to a bibliographic management program, such as EasyBib, EndNote, or RefWorks.

Any saved items will be available for the duration of your search session. You may lose items in your folder after a long period of inactivity.
If you would like to save your items beyond the session, you can copy/paste, email, print, or export your list to bibliographic management software (RefWorks or EndNote) at any time.

 Items saved in your folder can be formatted in the following styles:

• AGLC3
• AGPS Press
• AMA (American Medical Association)
• APA (American Psychological Association)
• Chicago/Turabian
• Harvard
• IEEE
• MLA (Modern Languages Association)
• Oxford Style
• Uniform (Medicine)

You can copy the formatted citations and paste them into your document, e-mail or save them.

Please remember to check your references for accuracy. Use the online guide Citing Your Sources for references.

If clicking on item the title or "online Full Text" link does not take you to the online version, you may need to look for a print copy.
When an article is not available online, the icon is usually gray and the link reads "Citation Online" instead of "Full Text Online."

Click on the article title or "Citation Online" link to display information about the article with the option to request an article.

Please make sure you check in the library catalog if UC has the volume and issue of the journal where the article was published before you place the interlibrary loan (ILLiad) request!