Go to http://search.ebscohost.com.

As of September 2019, there is a NEW password!

Enter the DISD username and password and click LOGIN. If you have forgotten the username or password, please contact the DISD Library.

On the Basic Search screen, enter your search terms (the words you want to search for) and press the Enter key or click the Search button. In the example below, we are searching for the words LEED building:

The Basic Search looks for your search terms in key areas of the articles, such as the title and abstract.

On the Search Results page, you will see how many articles were found at the top of the results list (1,484 in the example below):

Each result lists the author and title of the article, the magazine or journal in which the article was published, the date on which the article was published, and the pages on which the article appeared. This is called an article citation.

You can immediately read the full text of any article by clicking HTML Full Text or PDF Full Text just below the citation. Some articles are available only in HTML or only as PDF files. (HTML means that the article has been formatted to display on a web page, usually as plain text.)

Click on the title of any article in the Search Results to see more information about it and read the abstract (a brief summary of the article):

In the Tools menu along the right side of this page, you have the option to print a copy of the article, email the article to yourself or someone else, or save a copy of the article.

You can also get a citation for the article or listen to an audio version.

From any article page (pictured above), click Cite to see the citation for the article in APA, Chicago, MLA, and other styles:

If an article is available in HTML, you can also listen to the article read aloud or save the audio file to play on your mp3 player. In the Tools menu along the right side of the article page (pictured above), click Listen to see the audio options:

Click the Play button to listen on your computer. Click the Download mp3 button to save the audio file to play on your mp3 player.

Click the Settings button (the round wheel) to slow down or speed up the reader.

If you get too many results, you can Refine Results by limiting the search to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals, to articles with PDF Full Text available, or to articles with a Publication Date within certain years:

Select Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals to narrow your results down to articles published in these journals.

A scholarly journal, also called an academic journal or a peer-reviewed journal, is a journal with articles written by professors, researchers and other academic experts. When these experts write an article, they send it to a scholarly journal to consider for publication. The journal then sends the paper to several other experts in the field for them to review. The reviewers make notes not only about any errors, but also about anything that is unclear or misleading. The original authors must fix these problems before the journal will publish the article; this is called the peer review process.

Tip: Narrowing your search to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals is the best way to make sure that you get solid, reliable information. However, if the scholarly articles on your topic are too technical (for example, written for electrical engineers), use popular press articles from shelter magazines (like Time or National Geographic) and trade publications (like Hospitality Design or EcoStructure). In OmniFile, popular press sources are labeled Periodicals in the results list.

Select PDF Full Text to narrow your results down to articles available as PDF files. This will cut out any articles that are available only in HTML.

To Refine Results by limiting the Publication Date, click and drag the slider to change the date range and click Update. If we narrow our LEED building search down to articles published from 2015 through 2019, we reduce the number of Search Results from 1,484 to 233:

If your original search results include some relevant articles and some that are completely irrelevant, narrow your results by selecting one more Subjects:

In this context, Subject means what an article is really about. These Subjects allow you to separate the articles that are really about your topic from the articles that just mention your topic in passing. In our example, we can narrow our results to articles with the Subject “Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design Green Building Rating System”. This cuts out, for example, an article about using consultants that recommends using a consultant to achieve LEED certification.

To narrow your results by Subject, select one or more of the Subjects listed and click Update. In our example, this brings the number of results from 233 down to 126:

Once you find an article that is relevant, another way to search is to use one of the Subjects assigned to that article. For example, the article below has 5 Subjects assigned to it:

If we click on Sustainable building design & construction standards, we get 92 new results, all related to Sustainable building design & construction standards.

If you don’t find what you need using the Basic Search, try the Advanced Search. From any page in OmniFile, click Advanced Search under the search bar at the top of the page:

With Advanced Search, you can:

You can make your search more specific by using AND, OR, and NOT (these are called Boolean operators, and a search using those words is called a Boolean search):

In the example below, we are searching for recent articles about hotel and resort architecture, and we are limiting the results to articles available as PDF files so that we get the pictures.

If you go to http://search.ebscohost.com on a smartphone, you will be automatically directed to the mobile version of the site:

You can limit your search to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals or to articles with PDF Full Text on the main search screen. Click Search Options to do an Advanced Search.

If you are on the mobile site and want to switch to the regular desktop site, click Full Site at the bottom of any page. If you want to switch back to the mobile version, scroll to the very bottom of any page and click Mobile Site.

Another option for accessing OmniFile from your smartphone is to download the app. Search for EBSCO in the App Store or Google Play and download the EBSCOhost app:

Follow the instructions to download and authenticate the app. You will need the DISD username and password. If you have forgotten the username or password, please contact the DISD Library.