• Search Our Collections overview
• What can I find in Search Our Collections?
• Make the most of Search Our Collections
• Save and remove records
• Save search alerts
• Personalize search results by discipline
• Add and remove labels to a record

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Search Our Collections launched in July 2021, replacing Barton Classic Catalog, BartonPlus, and Vera. 

Features include:

• You can expand your search to find content beyond our own subscriptions, which you can then request copies of via ILB/Illiad.
• It has a more intuitive and integrated search and browse experience and more relevant results when navigating our collections – refining or expanding searches is much simpler, with more options.
• Connecting to online content and making requests will be more seamless.
• Content alerts: You can save a search in your account and have new content that matches your search criteria emailed to you. You can also save searches and records and share with others through persistent URLs.

Content included:

• books, journals, CDs, DVDs, maps, etc. in the MIT Libraries' print collections
• articles, e-books, and streaming media from the MIT Libraries' licensed electronic collections

Use the drop-down in the search box to limit your search to:

• All (default): includes all subsets of content described below
• MIT Library catalog: books, journals, CDs, DVDs, maps, etc. owned by the MIT Libraries
• Articles + chapters: articles, book chapters, streaming media, etc. from the MIT Libraries' licensed online content
• Course reserves: materials for use in MIT classes
• MIT theses: theses and dissertations written by MIT students

Not finding what you are looking for?

After running a search, check the box on the left column of the search results page to expand your search beyond MIT subscriptions - you may request these non-MIT materials through Interlibrary Borrowing/ILLiad or suggest that we purchase them:

Use the facets in the search results!  After running a search, you can limit the results by:

• publication type, such as books, articles, conference proceedings, etc.
• scope, such as peer-reviewed journals, online, etc.
• other facets, such as subject, language, publication date, etc.

Other tips:

• Visit Signing In to Your Account.
• Add subject terms to further narrow your results.

Search Our Collections allows signed-in users to save found records for subsequent sessions.  After a record has been saved, the saved records page allows you to perform the following operations on saved records: view, delete, export, and label.  Labels allow you to group and manage similar records.  Visit Label and Remove a Record for more information.

Without signing in, records are saved in local memory and are not retained between browser sessions.  Visit Signing In to Your Account for more information.

To save an individual record:

1. Select the pin button  next to the item you want to save in the search results.

2. The system highlights the item, changes the icon to the Pinned icon , and adds the item to the saved items page.

To save multiple records:

1. On the brief results page, select the check boxes that appear next to each item in the list.

2. As records are added to the page, the number of selected records appears above the results.  Select the pin to save items.

3. Select "add to saved items" or enter word(s) to label the saved items.

To remove a record from saved searches:

1. Select the unpin button next to the item either in the search results or on the saved records tab.

Search Our Collections allows signed-in users to receive email alerts when there is an update to the saved search query.  Visit Signing In to Your Account for more information.

Email alerts are sent weekly.  The Saved Searches Alerts job runs every Friday at 11 p.m.

An alert that has not been triggered in the last two months will be inactivated and will no longer be checked by the system.

To save a search alert:

1. You must complete a search to save an alert.  On the search results page, select the save search button to add the search to your saved items.

2.  Go to saved items by selecting the pin button in the upper right corner.

3. Select the saved searches tab.

4. Select the alarm button.

5. To cancel the alert, select the cancel alert button  that appears next to the query to cancel the alert.

Personalized settings allow you to boost the rankings of electronic records that match your preferred disciplines.  This type of ranking is particularly helpful for ambiguous searches, where search results come from a variety of disciplines or include a large set of articles.  It does not replace topic facets or act as a filter.  It simply adjusts the ranking algorithm to the general discipline of the user.

To personalize search results:

1. On the search results page, select "personalize by discipline".

2. Select up to 5 disciplines, then save changes.  These preferences are retained during the session for guests and unsigned users and between sessions for signed-in users.  Visit Signing In to Your Account for more information.

3. The personalized results are now on the left side.  If you want to give preference to newer material, select the "prefer newer material" check box.  "Edit disciplines" to update up to 5 disciplines.

Labels allow you to group records in private lists so you can access these records as needed in the future.  You may assign multiple labels to a saved record if you want to include that record in multiple lists.

To add a record to a private list:

1. Select the saved items button that appears at the top of each page.

2. Select the saved records tab if not selected already.  Visit Save and Remove Records for more information.

3. Select the add labels button .

4. Enter label name (can be one word or multiple words).

5. Example of a label.

To remove a label:

1. Select the saved records button that appears at the top of each page.

2. Select the saved records tab.

3. Click the record's add label button .

4. Select the delete label button to remove the label.