Introducing Sofia: the Shared Library Search Tool

Facets (also known as filters) appear on the left of your search results. They are very useful for narrowing your search to find specific content - you might choose to search only for print books or for DVDs, for instance. You can also use them to expand your results to include those from other Quebec university libraries or even from libraries worldwide.

1. Held by Library: limits the search to collections in one of three library levels – home institution, Quebec academic libraries or international libraries.
2. Format: limits the search to pre-defined items – books, articles, videos, journals, audio recordings, etc. You may select different types of items.
3. Content Type: limits the search to certain types of content (scientific paper, open access publication).
4. Publication Year: limits the search to a specific date or range of dates.
5. Author/Creator:  limits the search to a specific author or creator.
6. Subject: limits the search to a specific topic.
7. Databases: limits the search to specific sources of data.
8. Language: limits the search to a specific language (i.e.: English items only).

You can retain selected filters for subsequent searches or clear them using the top option in the filters column.

For more information on facets, click here.

Search results may be sorted by relevance. One of Sofia’s unique features is to provide three types of relevance sorting:

1. Best match: priority is given to the number of times a word appears in the item. Items where the keyword appears most often come up first in the results list.
2. Recency: priority is given to the publication date of items. However, date is not the only indicator for this type of sorting. Do not confuse it  with sorting by date (most recent).
3. Libraries: priority is given to items from the user’s library collection.  

Other sorting options with the discovery tool Sofia :

• Author (A-Z): search results are sorted by alphabetical order according to the author’s family name and given name.
• Date (newest first): search results are sorted according to the publication date of the item (most recent to oldest).
• Date (oldest first): search results are sorted according to the publication date of the item (oldest to the most recent).
• Most widely held: search results are sorted according to the number of international libraries that hold the item. The most held item is ranked first, and the least held is ranked last.
• Title (A-Z): search results are sorted by alphabetical order according to the title.

This option groups several editions in a single result (most recent or oldest copy/different formats), and it avoids duplicates. The Group related Editions option is set by default.

This option expands a query by adding standard words from a thesaurus. You may also launch a bilingual search (English/French). Keywords can be translated into English or French, and are automatically added to the query.