What is Summon?
Summon helps you find articles, books and more with a single search. Try it now:
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Summon searches everything in the library catalogue (books, ebooks, journal titles, games, music, videos, government information, maps, and more!), almost all of the articles and other sources in the databases that we subscribe to, plus research by Carleton faculty, staff and students found in our institutional repository, CURVE.
But, sadly, Summon doesn't search everything the library owns or subscribes to so you may need to search our other resources to find everything you need. Summon also doesn't let you do sophisticated searches that you may be used to doing in specific databases or the library catalogue.
When should I use Summon?
| I want to... | Use this | Why? |
|---|---|---|
| Search for articles and/or books on a topic | Summon | Summon searches a wide range of sources and finds books, articles and other useful resources on your topic. |
| Get started on an interdisciplinary topic | Summon | Summon finds resources from databases covering many topics, so can be much more efficient than searching several databases. |
| Narrow a topic | Summon | Summon lets you narrow your search by subject or discipline, using facets on the left side. Each facet shows you how many results you'll get if you select it, so you can see in advance if you're narrowing your topic down to only 2 or 3 items. |
| Search for a specific book, video, journal title, game, etc. | Library catalogue | The library catalogue lets you do more specific searches and has up-to-date information about whether items are in the library or checked out. This information in Summon may be a few hours old. |
| Renew my library books | Library catalogue | You can only access your library account through the library catalogue, not through Summon. |
| Use specific search options available in a database | Specific database | Summon doesn't let you search by specific fields like methodology, NAICS code, jurisdiction, etc. so you need to go directly to a specialized database to do that kind of search. |
Help with Summon
If you need help or have questions about using Summon, please contact the Research Help Desk.
Feedback
We welcome your feedback about Summon. Please use our feedback form.