Primo: An Overview of the Law Library’s Online Catalog

Transcript

In this video you will be introduced to Primo, the law library online catalog.

Primo is located on the library front page at library.law.hawaii.edu. From this search box you can search the law library collections: this includes electronic and print books, articles, databases*, government documents, conference papers, dissertations, media items and more included in the Law Library collection. There is also the option to initiate an Advanced Search.

I have done a search using “copyright infringement” as a search term. Notice we got over 63,000 results.

On this screen you can see the results in the center, filters on the left, and a way to tweak the search with different fields and methods of searching just under the search box. At the bottom here I display three of the drop-down menu options indicating the different methods of tweaking your search: by format, location of search words, and fields to search in.

The filters on the left let you adjust your search results. Perhaps you are only interested in books, you would select books and APPLY FILTERS. Don’t forget you can click “Show more” to see additional resources.

There are other ways to narrow and refine your search. Maybe you only want items available online. This can be done under the Availability facet. Or perhaps you are just interested in items concerning the Internet. Your search results can be narrowed by a variety of subjects. Be sure to click SHOW MORE to expand the fields. Also, you can narrow your search by creation/publication date.

Lastly, you can rearrange your results by other than relevance, which is the default. A drop-down menu gives you additional choices like date, title, or author.

Looking at the results can tell us the format of the item, date, author, if it’s available online or what the library call number is if we have it in the library. For journal articles you will be given the citation and perhaps a brief clipping from the article with the relevant search words.

Please note that you can add items to a saved records after you sign in with your UH credentials. Once signed in you will also have access to saved searches and a search history. You will also want to sign in to have a better if you want to request items or have access to your library account.

Once you click into an item on your list you will be presented with ways to use the citation, including exporting RIS to a bib manager like Zotero, printing, obtaining the citation, getting a permalink URL, or emailing. You may also be presented with a method of obtaining the item online if possible. In addition to how to obtain a physical loan if it’s available. Select “Request Specific Copy”.

You will then be able to select which library you want to pickup your loan from, the terms of the loan, and a date you no longer need it (this last field is optional).

If an item is not available online or as a physical copy, you can always click “Request PDF scan” and be taken to the UH interlibrary loan request portal to complete an ILL form.

You can save your favorite search queries. You can even set up alerts which will notify you of any changes to the search results. The frequency of alert emails depends on whether the query’s results have changed but are generally weekly unless no change has occurred within 90 days and then the alert is inactivated. At any time you want to return to your search results, click on the magnifying glass.

You also have the option to conduct an Advanced search by clicking Advanced search just to the right of the search box. Then you will be presented with options of where to search, which fields, material type, language, date, etc. You can add additional search parameters as well. I am searching the law library for books on animal law by either author Johnson or Gislason.

One last thing, you can always alter the scope of your search by clicking the down menu item to the right of your search term and select a different scope. Your choices include the Law Library, Everything, All UH Libraries, Course Reserves, or our Institutional Repositories. There is a chart indicating exactly what is being searched under each different scope. If you click “NEW SEARCH” on the top menu you will find this search chart.

Thanks for watching our video. If you have any questions about Primo or other library resources, feel free to contact me. I am Brian Huffman, our electronic services librarian.