How to search for information effectively? At Laurea there are two dedicated information search services: Finna and LibGuides. In addition, the library guides the use of Google Scholar as a search interface for Laurea’s article databases and various AI tools. Choose the tool according to your needs.
Choose an information search tool from the following:
Laurea Finna – Laurea’s electronic and printed materials
Laurea LibGuides – Subject-specific information search guides and links to databases
Google Scholar as a search interface for Laurea’s databases
AI tools for information search
Laurea Finna – electronic and printed materials
The Laurea Library’s customer interface is Laurea Finna. Finna has two parts: Basic search and Article search.
- Basic search: books & journals, theses and domestic e-books. Corresponds to a traditional library search.
- The Article search is a meta-search that allows you to search for English-language articles from international article databases. Note! This is an easy way to get started with article searching, but it is not a very comprehensive search. For a comprehensive search, use the databases’ own interfaces via the LibGuides.
Note! On a home computer it is important to log in first to access Laurea’s licenses. Through Finna you can reserve printed materials from the 3AMK consortium (Laurea, Haaga-Helia and Metropolia) to your campus library. Electronic materials are institution-specific.
Laurea LibGuides – subject-specific information search guides and links to Laurea’s databases
The library provides each subject area with its own information search guide, a LibGuide. The guide gathers the key databases and open web materials from the field.
The service includes, for example:
- links to Laurea’s databases and their native interfaces
- materials categorized by subject area to help understand what kinds of databases we have
- instructions for using databases, e.g. reading e-books on a tablet
- The links work so that on a home computer you are first presented with Laurea’s Haka login page.
Materials are categorized by subject area to help understand what kinds of databases we have and there are instructions for using the databases, e.g. reading e-books on a tablet.
Using Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a search engine developed by Google for finding scholarly information. Read a more detailed description on Google’s own pages.
Google Scholar is a convenient tool for information search: it searches both subscription databases and open web materials and shows how often a work has been cited.
Note! Links from outside the network to Scholar do not work directly to the databases. For linking to work, you must add Laurea University of Applied Sciences to the library links in Google Scholar’s settings.
AI tools for information retrieval
Laurea has adopted AI-based information search tools.
These tools offer a different perspective on article searching than the Laurea Finna article search or Google Scholar. In addition, they provide tools for brainstorming, formulating research questions and creating search terms, and they generate article summaries and more. Read more here.
Access to the paid Keenious AI tool has been acquired for Laurea students and staff for the time being. Read how to create accounts for the Keenious Plus service and other detailed instructions.