About Summon
What is Summon?
Summon simplifies the process of finding information in the Libraries. It searches through a massive collection of books, scholarly journals, newspaper articles, e-books, dissertations, conference proceedings, and numerous academic databases. Rather than search for all of these things in separate databases, Summon lets you find them all at once, quickly and easily. Even better, it's tied directly to what is available through the NCSU Libraries, online or in print.
Finding articles with Summon
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What does Summon search?
Summon may index some or all of the databases and journals you already use. Some databases and journals have full-text indexing, others are indexed just by citation information (e.g., title, author, abstract, etc.). Here are some of the major publishers and databases at least partially indexed in Summon:
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This is a representation of the information you can (and cannot) find with Summon. The relative sizes of each piece are not to scale.
More specialized databases available at the Libraries
Who should use Summon?
Summon can be used by anyone: undergraduate students new to the Libraries, graduate students, and professional researchers. Its breadth of coverage and ease of use make it an ideal first place to look for articles, books, and other research.
Many will find that Summon points them to all the information they need for a class paper or long-term research project. Other researchers will want to dig deeper or use search tools not available in Summon: specialized databases remain available for all subject areas.
Summon combines many previously disparate databases of articles, books, and more. It is new and different, so please let us know how it works for your research.
