The Library Replies

What language can I do the search in?

In any language. However, bear in mind that most scientific and academic publications are written or indexed in English. Consequently, you may retrieve many more results if you perform the search in English.

You also have the Language filter to delimit your results.

Related questions

What search tips can I use?

Try these tricks in the Library search tool. You can also use them in most academic information search tools:

Where to search

Choose any of these options from the search engine's drop-down menu:

The search box

All: all the contents available in the UOC Library, the O2 Repository and the recommended reading of the courses.
UOC and other libraries: get results from the UOC and from other Spanish and international libraries, including the Catalan University Union Catalogue.
Recommended reading: just the resources recommended by the University's teaching staff for further information on the courses.
Learning resources: search among the materials prepared by the UOC and used in the classrooms.
The O2 repository: consult contents prepared by the UOC community and available with open access. This may be, for example, final projects or scientific articles.
Catalan University Union Catalogue: broaden your search with the contents available in other Catalan university libraries. You can request books on loan or digital articles.

Filters

The filters will help you hone your searches. The main filters are:

Availability: choose the type of document which interests you according to the format (online or physical copy), whether it is open access or the quality (whether it is peer-reviewed).
Type of resource: choose the type of documents, books, articles, theses or videos.
Journal title: thanks to this filter you will see the articles from the publications which have the term searched for in the title.
UOC collection: Special series of content grouped by the UOC.
Subject: get results for a specific discipline.

To further finetune the results, you can select other filters such as the date or language.

The Boolean operators

The operators AND, OR and NOT (they must be written in capital letters) help you refine your results in the Library resources search engine. You can use these operators to combine the search terms and establish relationships between them.

In the Library search box, Boolean operators are used in English and in upper case.

How can I use them?

How can I refine my results even more? Combine the Boolean operators as often as you want to create personalized search formulas.

AND	OR	NOT
The results contain all the search terms.	The results contain at least one of the search terms.	The results exclude one of the search terms.
Travel AND Europe	College OR university	Mustang NOT animal
You'll get results about travelling in Europe.	You'll get results with college, university and both terms together.	You'll get results about the car and not about horses.

As in mathematics, you can use brackets to define the order in which the terms must be interpreted: the search engine reads first the words in brackets. For example, if you write your search as (children OR adolescents) AND learning, the search engine will first interpret that you only want information about children or adolescents and will then relate these results with learning.

Furthermore, if you want to search for results that contain a specific phrase, you can use inverted commas. For example: If you write "Olympic games", you will get results with the words "Olympic Games" in that order and together.

The asterisk (*) and question mark (?)

Asterisk and question mark are wildcard. If you use it next to the root of a word, you will recover results that include all its variations.

Entering cultur* will retrieve content with the terms culture, cultural and culturally.

If you enter subject: librar*, you will recover all the documents that contain library, libraries or librarians as subjects.

Quotation marks (" ")

Adding quotation marks (" ") at the beginning and end of a phrase or group of words retrieves results for exactly those words.

If you search for "borderline personality disorder", you will see only documents that contain this exact phrase.

If you enter “history teaching” in the search box, you will obtain results such as Teaching History.

How does Oxford Academic's AI Discovery Assistant work?

You can access the Oxford Academic databases in two ways. The first is to go to the UOC Library's website, type "Oxford" in the search box, click on the title of the database and press the blue Available online button. Another option is to go to the UOC Library's Search the digital collection by field, search for "Oxford" and click on Access the resource.

Find the AI Discovery Assistant. Once you're on the Oxford Academic platform, look for the AI Discovery Assistant option at the top, next to the search box.

Start the chat with the assistant. Click to open the new chat window. You can write the questions in the language of your choice.

Receive a response and resources. The assistant will offer you up to ten items of relevant content from Oxford Academic in answer to your query. The resources may be in several languages, but they are generally in English.
How do I listen to articles in PressReader?

On your computer, right-click on any part of the article open in full page format and select the "Listen" option from the drop-down menu.

On your mobile, open any magazine and tap the headphone icon at the bottom of the screen. If you have opened the article in mobile text mode, tap the three dots in the bottom menu and you will find the headphone icon. After reading aloud is turned on, you can navigate between articles by swiping right or left.
I've installed the PressReader app and it asks me to make a payment to access the content. What should I do?
The Library subscribes to PressReader, and members of the UOC community can read its newspapers and magazines for free. If you are asked for a payment or you see messages like "Go Premium" or "See all purchase options", it's likely that you haven't signed in correctly.

Make sure to select Sign in > Library or Group and choose UOC from the list of libraries.

Follow these steps to sign out:

Go to More (in the bottom margin of the app).

Select Accounts.

Select the active PressReader account.

Then select Sign out (at the bottom of the list).

Now, sign back in by following these steps:

Open the app and tap Sign in (bottom of the home page).

Select Libraries & Groups, and then Select Library or Group.

Type UOC in the search window at the top of the list of libraries. Tap Esta publicación está suscrita por la Biblioteca de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

Then tap the Sign in button and enter your Virtual Campus username and password.

You will then be able to access all the content of PressReader through the app. A 30-day timer will appear. When it runs out, you will have to sign in again and search for the UOC Library in the list.