Bishop's Resource Guide: Using Sofia

Advanced Search

Advanced Search allows you to search more specifically and complexly.  You can use Advanced Search by clicking on “Advanced Search”, under the magnifying glass icon.

Advanced search allows you to search your terms in specific fields/indexes, which allows for a more specific search.  Users may specify their search criteria by clicking the drop-down menu on under "Search Index".

If you need more search boxes, you can add them by clicking “+ Add Row” button.

Advanced Search includes other options:

• Search a specific database or group of databases
• Narrow results to open access or scientific articles
• Search for a specific format
• Search for a specific range of publication dates
• Limit results to a specific branch or library

Searching for Print Books

Searching for eBooks

Searching for Print Journals, Newspapers & Magazines

To search through our print collection of periodicals, you must first go to Advanced Search in Sofia. From there you can decide if you want to search for print periodicals by title or subject.

Searching for Electronic Journals, Newspapers & Magazines

If you are looking for online periodicals, from the Library homepage you can click on the "Search Articles" tab located in the Sofia search tool.  

Scholarly Journal Articles

Building on the steps taken on the Journals, Newspapers & Magazines tab, you can further narrow your results to scholarly articles by selecting "Only return peer-reviewed articles" from Sofia's Advanced Search page.

Or If you have already conducted your search, you can limit your results to scholarly sources by clicking "Peer-reviewed" on the left-hand side of the screen.

Course Reserves

You can access Course Reserves from our Library home page or within Sofia. 

To access the course reserves section in the discovery tool Sofia, click on the “Course Reserves” tab in the dark strip under the Sign In button.

This section usually includes recommended or mandatory material for a course. You may find items with the following criteria:

• Course acronym (SOC 100, ECO 217, BAC 122)
• Course prefix  (PSY, ENG, HIS, SOC, etc.)
• Course name (Microeconomics, Criminology, Women and Penal System)
• Name of professor/lecturer

Click on the course to view related material. The item’s location, call number and description are displayed.

With the shared system all academic libraries in Quebec use, students and faculty now have two options when they want to borrow resources unavailable at the Library Learning Commons.

1. You can borrow in person at other universities. Students and faculty may use their student or faculty card to borrow items in person at other Canadian university libraries.

2. If you are unable to go to the library that has the resource you need, you can use Interlibrary Loans (ILL).  Students and faculty can request books, journal articles and many other library sources not available at Bishop's.

You can now request an ILL directly in Sofia!

Please note: You can save up to 100 items in a list. If you reach the limit, you will receive a warning message: "Your list is full. Please remove records from your list or clear your list to add more records." You could close the message and continue to search; but, you will not be able to add other items to the list until one or more items are removed.

You can delete one item at a time by using the Delete icon beside each record.

Creating and Saving Lists

Please note: You can save up to 100 items in a list. If you reach the limit, you will receive a warning message: "Your list is full. Please remove records from your list or clear your list to add more records." You could close the message and continue to search; but, you will not be able to add other items to the list until one or more items are removed.

You can delete one item at a time by using the Delete icon beside each record.

Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT) (ET, OU, SAUF)

Boolean operators (AND/ET/+, OR/OU, NOT/SAUF/-) are inserted between keywords in a search box or between search boxes to include or exclude certain words or phrases.

Boolean operators must be in UPPERCASE for Sofia to recognize them.

Keywords and their Boolean operators are processed left to right.

For more information on Boolean operators, click here.

Quotation Marks

Use English (" ") or French (« ») quotation marks to find an exact phrase or the closest words.

Examples:

• "Social Media"
• "Indigenous Women"
• «Philippe Aubert de Gaspé»

Truncation

An asterisk (*) isolates the root of a word to include all variations or words from the same family. This generally increases search results.

Note: You must have a minimum of three characters preceding the asterisk (*).

Example:

• Petrol* = petrol, pétrole, pétrolier, pétrolière, pétrolate, pétrolatum, petroleum, etc.

The question mark substitutes several letters (9 maximum).

Example:

• Encyclop?dia = encyclopedia, encyclopaedia

Wildcards

A pound sign/hashtag (#) or question mark (?) substitutes one or several variable letters in a word. Wildcards broaden search results.

The pound sign/hashtag (#) substitutes only one letter.

Note: You must have a minimum of three characters preceding the pound sign/hashtag (#) or question mark (?).

Examples:

• Thes#s = thesis, theses, thèses
• Wom#n = woman, women
• The question mark substitutes several letters (9 maximum).

Example:

• Encyclop?dia = encyclopedia, encyclopaedia

For more information on truncation or wildcards, click here.

Brackets

Specify the order in which Boolean operators are applied to group keywords. Once the search is launched, Sofia interprets the words and operators in brackets first and interprets the words and operators outside the brackets last.

Example:

• (itinéran* OR sans-abri OR homeless*) AND (adolescent* OR teenage*)

To see what you have checked out, you need to sign in to your account and click ‘My Account’.

• Checked Out: This is where you can see the items currently checked out to you, along with their due dates. Items can be sorted and renewed by clicking Renew Items.

To see what you have placed on hold, you need to sign in to your account and click ‘My Account’.

• Requested: Requests or Holds you have placed on titles are listed on the Requested tab. Your holds can be sorted as well as cancelled by clicking Cancel Requests or edited by clicking Edit Request.

To see what you have placed on hold, you need to sign in to your account and click ‘My Account’

• Fees: Any fines owed to the Library can be seen under the Fees tab. Charges can be sorted and fees paid by clicking Pay Fees.

To edit your profile, you need to sign in to your account and click ‘My Account’

• Profile: Under the Profile tab, you can add an alternate email to receive Library notifications from that include status notifications about your requests, library fees and more.  You can also choose to add in a phone number to receive text message notifications.  Under the Profile tab, you can also change your password.