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 actively saved!
By the way, 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 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 again 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 (you can copy and paste the Query from below) and a description (optional), then click Save. Next, you'll be taken to a page that lists all the databases Discover@UMSL searched. Click Continue to be taken to the list of saved searches in your library account. The newly saved search will be at the end of the list. 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 In the search box at the top of the page, click the X 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.
