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Hi! Welcome to HerdSearch, NDSU’s tool for searching all of the Libraries’ resources. HerdSearch is simple, intuitive and offers many
different ways to find the information you are looking for. Let’s try a search for American bison to see how HerdSearch
works and what it looks like.The results include articles and books. If I click on the Details link I get plenty of information to help
me decide if this resource will be useful for me or not. The Find or Request link tells me if the book is available to check out and the call
number so I can find it in the library. Let’s take a look at an article. Here it says it’s a peer- reviewed journal – perfect! The Details
link gives me a description of the article that lets me decide if I want to read more. It is really important to take the time to examine the
citation information and the information from the Details link to make sure that you are selecting the right types of resources for your assignment.
The View It link takes me to the links for the full-text article. And here it is – right there! HerdSearch does tend to give you a lot of
results so let’s look at some ways to narrow down your searches. On the left, there are many ways to refine your
results. The Subject option is very useful. For example, I’m interested in bison and frontier life, so I am going to add the Frontier and pioneer life
subject to narrow down my seach. Those results look much better for my topic! Other options for refining your search include the physical
Locations of the materials, the Publication Date and the Resource Type. Let’s take a look at Advanced Search. Often professors require
you use materials that are less than five years old. Advanced Search is perfect for situations like that. Sometimes you already know the
name of the author or title that you are looking for. Advanced Search makes that easy to do too. If you know you need a particular type of
resource like journal articles or books you can narrow your results to those resources right from the start! If you are not at the Library and need
something you can read right away, you can save time by only searching Electronic Resources. The key to successful
HerdSearching is to have a clear idea of what type of information you are looking for and a good list of keywords. If you would like to learn
more about using HerdSearch please contact the Library. We are happy to help.