To access your account from a search results page, click the My Library Account link in the dark gray bar near the top of the page.
Let’s take a closer look at your “My Folder” area. This is your account dashboard—the reason you are asked to log in when you run searches.
A Your main My Folder area will hold all of the items you save unless they are placed directly into a custom folder (see E below). The Articles section holds any articles or print books you’ve saved (with the number of items in parentheses), and the eBooks section holds eBooks you’ve saved. The other categories will rarely contain items.
B The Loans section contains any print books you’ve checked out, as well as eBooks you’ve downloaded for a specified period of time (usually 14-21 days). The Requests section is where you can track requests for any print books that UMSL or another UM System library owns. If you have been fined for an unreturned or damaged item, the amount will appear in the Fees section. For more on these three sections, see the Accessing Your Library Accounts page and the Finding and Requesting Books page of this guide.
C Searches can be saved two different ways and will be stored in either the Persistent Links to Searches section or the Saved Searches section. For more information, switch to the Saving and Retrieving Searches tab near the top of this page.
D If you plan to be researching a specific topic for more than a few weeks, you can set up alerts that will notify you when new citations are added that match your criteria. These can be managed in the Search Alerts and Journal Alerts sections.
E The My Custom section will allow you to add folders for different courses or topics to better organize your research. See the Saving and Retrieving Items tab near the top of this page for more.
Whenever you see search results that look even remotely promising, you should save them for future reference. The nice thing about Discover@UMSL is that—because you’re already logged in when you perform a search—any results you save will automatically be added to your personal account and saved indefinitely. You won’t lose them when you close your browser window.
You can save items into their default locations (as outlined in the bulleted list below) or into custom folders that you’ve created for specific courses, projects, or topics.
1 To save an item to its default location:
A Click the blue folder to the right of the item title. Doing so will change the folder to yellow and save the item into your My Library Account. NOTE: If you’ve already added Custom folders (see procedures in 2 below), each time you click on a blue folder you’ll be asked to choose where to save the item—in the default folder or one of your custom folders.
B After clicking on it, the item’s folder will change to yellow to indicate the item has been saved.
2 If you are doing research for multiple classes or projects, it can be helpful to create and save items into custom folders:
C First, open your account in a new tab by right-clicking on the My Library Account link in the dark gray bar near the top of the page.
D Click the New link next to My Custom in the menu on the left side.
E Give the new folder a short name (and a description, if needed) and click Save.
F Once you’ve created a custom folder, you’ll have the option to copy or move items that are currently in your default folder (and vice versa).
G If a custom folder exists, each time you click on a blue folder you’ll be asked to choose where to save the item—in the default folder or one of your custom folders.
Discover@UMSL will time out after about 30 minutes of inactivity, so it’s a good idea to save your searches before stepping away. Even though you log in before searching, you can still lose any work you haven’t saved!
The following procedure was written for Discover@UMSL (which is an EBSCO product), but it should also work with any individual EBSCO database (such as Academic Search Complete, ERIC, CINAHL, etc.).
1 How to save a search:
A Click the Search History link below the search box. This will toggle open an area between the search box and the list of results. NOTE: If this area is empty, click the yellow Search button to force it to recognize your initial search.
B Decide which search you want to save by looking at:
When you’ve decided which search to save, select it by clicking the checkbox to the left of the Search ID#.
C Click the Save Searches / Alerts link.
D Name the search (e.g., copy and paste the Query from below) and a description (optional), then click Save. Next, you'll be taken to a screen that asks you to click Continue, then to the list of saved searches in your library account. To return to your search results, look for the Back link below your name, near the top left corner of the browser window.
2 To print your search history or retrieve your saved searches:
E Click the Print Search History link to print. To retrieve your saved searches, you can either click the Retrieve Searches link here or the My Library Account link at the top of the page.
3 To combine searches using your Search History:
F Click the X inside the search box to clear it. Don’t forget this step! (See why in H below.)
G Click 2 or more checkboxes for the searches you want to combine.
H Combine the searches by clicking either Search with AND or Search with OR. This will create a new search in your history. In the image below, “S3 OR S4” means Search S3 and Search S4 were combined with OR; because we used OR, the number of results grew.
Note: If we had not first cleared the search box (step F above), the new search terms would be (health disparit* minority women) AND (S3 OR S4) and we would have the same number of results as S4 because of the AND operator.
