When you search for a journal title in the Knowledge and Library Hub, you may see a journal 'placard' displayed at the top of the search results. This placard allows you to search within the journal. A placard looks like this in the new user interface: Clicking about this publication opens a screen where you can click to see details of all the holdings and coverage. This placard only displays when the following conditions are met: 1. The journal title must be selected as part of your holdings in EBSCO Holdings Manager (HLM). You can check this by logging in to EBSCOadmin. 2. The journal title must be index in fulltext in an database which has been enabled in EBSCO Discovery Service (the Knowledge and Library Hub). This tends to happen with EBSCO content via the enhanced versions of Medline and CINAHL Previously the search box only appeared where the title was not selected more than once in HLM. In April 2024 it was spotted that this was no longer the case. If you want to see all of the coverage for a title from the placard you can click on the Title or About this Publication

From 6 May 2022, you will need to enter your Boolean terms in lower case. In April 2022, we made a change to how Boolean operators work in the hub, so that you had to enter them in upper case. We still think the reasoning behind doing this was correct: When entered in lower case, Boolean operators (and, or, not) cannot be used for their normal language meanings. For example, if a user searches for the phrase 'lack of sleep is not ideal', the Hub will interpret the word 'not' as a Boolean operator and so won't retrieve results which contain the word 'ideal'. Most users of discovery systems use natural language searching and don’t use Boolean operators. Setting the requirement to enter Boolean operators in upper case means that the default (lower case) is a natural language search and will retrieve as expected for the majority of users. It also means that Boolean operators can be used for more advanced searchers without compromising more basic searching. However, changing to upper case Boolean has thrown up an issue that we hadn't anticipated, which means that the popular terms function doesn't work, and users are getting far fewer results than they expect when using the popular terms function (as the search is now ignoring the lower case or, ANDing all the suggested terms together). We've been in touch with EBSCO, and there isn't a quick fix for this - they've logged our request to change the Boolean operators in the popular terms suggestions as an enhancement request at their end. But we don't have a date for this to be implemented. So we've made the decision to change this back, until EBSCO are able to implement the fix to popular terms suggestions. On the 6th May, we will make a global change for all hub instances, so that Boolean operators can be entered in lower case again. We apologise for the confusion that this may cause, but feel this is the best option for now, in light of feedback from library colleagues. If you want to continue using upper case Boolean operators for your own instance of the hub, you can change this yourself: Step 1 - Go to EBSCOadmin and sign in   Step 2 - Select your EDS profile: Step 3 - Select the Searching tab, then change the setting "Require uppercase Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)" from OFF to ON: Step 4 - Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Submit. NB: If you want to keep Boolean as upper case, you should also switch off the popular terms suggestion function, otherwise your users will get some unexpected results: From the same Searching tab, scroll down to Autocomplete Keyword, and switch it from On to Off: Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Submit.

What results display on the Knowledge and Library Hub is controlled by what database indexes are turned on.  Instances where the local library management system has been integrated If your ebooks are catalogued on your local library management system and this has been integrated with the Hub, you should be able to view all of your ebooks. If you cannot, double-check that it has been catalogued correctly, and if so, report this via the service desk - please include record ID number, title, author, ISBN, publisher, publication date and edition. This will enable EBSCO to match this against their holdings and investigate. Instances where the local library management system has NOT been integrated, or ebooks are not catalogued locally Ebook metadata is held in three potential database indexes: Ebook index (edsebk) BASE (edsbas) VLeEbooks (edsvle) One or all of these database indexes may need to be turned on to enable all missing ebooks to be discoverable. Unfortunately we do not have a list of what titles appear in which index, so turning them on is trial and error. Please be aware that turning on these indexes will enable a lot of additional ebook content to display in search results that may not be appropriate e.g. fiction books, and may affect the subject headings displaying in that filter. There are also occasional issues with metadata from these database indexes not matching metadata held in Holdings Management (HLM), which can result in the wrong buttons being displayed. If at all possible, we recommend that ebooks are catalogued locally on your regional library management system, and when this is integrated into the Hub, this will ensure that all your ebooks are discoverable.  See this related FAQ How should ebooks be discovered in the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub?  

A standard search of the Knowledge and Library Hub will search across a number of databases. (See What resources are searched through the Knowledge and Library Hub? to find out more.) This means that the same article might be retrieved from multiple sources. To avoid these multiple records appearing on your results list, the Knowledge Hub will remove duplicates showing you only the record with the highest relevance ranking. Deduplication is based on the following features: Title Author Date published ISSN or Journal name or ISBN When you run your search, you will initially see the total number of results retrieved across all the databases. If the content you retrieve appears in multiple sources, you may find that your actual list of search results is much smaller than the total hit count. If you want to check the total hits prior to deduplication, you can do this by checking the results database-by-database viewing the full "Limit by Databases" list (rebadged as Content Provided in the new Hub interface). If your instance of the Knowledge Hub has an integrated library catalogue, these records are not deduplicated. You may see multiple copies of the same item if they appear in the source catalogue.

What are the EBSCO Discovery Service Indexes? The EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) Indexes comprise records of different types, including articles, books, reports, conference materials, videos, blogs, and more, from many different publishers. The databases provide hundreds of thousands of records for searching in EDS and linking out to library holdings and electronic subscriptions. Importantly - your users can only find things in the Hub that are included in records in the databases you select. In addition to the databases prepared by EBSCO you may have a database for your LMS, integrated NHS Repository and other local resources. We have information about which databases we have switched on and are searched as the defaults for all instances. Adding a new database to your profile Although we generally recommend not changing the database selections that have been set for all instances, there may be occasions when you need to add or remove a database from your EDS profile to customize your search experience. If you wish to add a new database to your EDS profile: Click the Customize Services Tab. From the Choose Profile drop-down list, select the profile labelled NHS Knowledge and Library hub (hee_eds)- eds. Click the Databases sub-tab. In the upper left corner a drop-down menu is set to Show: Enabled. Using the drop-down, change the display to Show: Disabled to show available database to add to the profile. For each database you would like to add, set it to On in the Enable column. Click Submit. The database(s) are now added to the profile. In many cases you will need to add a matching package in HLM (Holdings Link Manager) and in some you may need to add a Custom link. You should test your linking experience after adding the database and contact the Service Desk with any follow on questions. Removing databases from your profile If you wish to remove a database from your EDS profile: Click the Customize Services Tab. From the Choose Profile drop-down list, select the profile labelled NHS Knowledge and Library hub (hee_eds)- eds. Click the Databases sub-tab. Set the Enable setting to Off for each database you would like to disable from the EDS profile. Click Submit. The database(s) are now removed from the profile. Remember to remove related packages in HLM if you no longer subscribe to the content. It may be better to hide rather than remove packages in HLM due to them sometimes reappearing if removed due to system glitches.

The Request a Service section of the support portal has service enhancement requests forms that allow you to suggest enhancements for particular resources. These forms cover suggestions about BMJ Journals, Browzine, Kortext, Third Iron, OpenAthens, RefWorks and Oxford Academic. You can also find forms for requesting changes to the way your Hub looks, links etc (these are for library services to make requests on behalf of all their users). If you have other suggestions or requests, you can raise a ticket via the service desk, or email helpdesk@knowledgehub.freshservice.com.

EBSCO regularly add new databases to the selection available in EDS. NHS England Resource Discovery and partner suppliers also work with them to add databases of interest to NHS users. For a database to be available via the Hub it needs to be included as an EBSCO partner databases (or EBSCO product). To achieve this requires technical standards to be met, agreement on intellectual property rights and then a development process. The result of this is that we are not always able to add databases we might wish but we can ask the question. In early 2024 EBSCO have a back log of partner databases to build so new requests are likely to be slow to come on stream if not already in process. Examples of databases made available through our work with EBSCO include the procedure level indexing of Royal Marsden Manual, the UK version of BMJ Best Practice and a NICE Guidance database. Some databases are only available where you have a subscription to the product - an example here is ClinicalKey Flex. It is unlikely that the literature databases such as EMBASE and EMCARE will be available to us via the Hub due to the platform through which we buy these. The journal articles in these databases are likely available in the Hub via the EBSCO indexes and databases that are available. Suggestions for potential databases can be made via the Service Desk. The Hub team monitor for new EDS enabled databases that may be suitable for general inclusion. The process for assessment for potential inclusion is as follows: Identification of candidate database via EBSCO update or feedback to the Service Desk Initial testing by Hub Team to ensure within scope Invitation to test and feedback to Hub CoP Paper for Change Advisory Board combining NHSE and Hub testing feedback Decision communicated and roll out completed if required If accepted the roll out will either be to all instances or on an opt in basis.

The Knowledge and Library Hub is designed predominantly to support rapid access to evidence from journals, books and other sources. It is not designed for carrying out systematic / reproducible searches of the research literature that are best delivered in the advanced interfaces such as Ovid, EBSCOHost and so on. Core tasks the Hub is the place for: Finding a known article and accessing it Broad brush searches Finding something recent on a topic Find the names of people writing on a topic Looking for articles and books you can access right now Another way to think of it is that the Hub is for when your research is - Straight-forward, Simple, Quick as opposed to the databases (Medline, CINAHL etc) are for - Detailed, Complex, Lengthy.

You can use wildcards and truncation inside a phrase on the Hub but it may not give you more results than a search without them. This behaviour is unchanged in the new EBSCO interfaces. This Connect article explains how truncation can make your search more restricted as it prevents the search expansions that are applied in the Hub by default from working. If you run your searches with the various expander options turned off the inclusion of a wildcard within a phrase will work as you expect. However if you use expanders this no longer applies - this is because the processing that would be involved in generating all of the different variants and all of the expanders against them across the multiple databases within EDS would slow the return of results to an intolerable level. In the above worked example you can see S1 where there is no wild card the expanders work. A wider search results because it is able to manage to expand this single phrase. In S2 it can only do so to a limited extent. S3 and S4 show behaviour without the expanders with the wild card adding a small number of extra hits versus the basic term. Generally the Hub is not the place for complex searching as it is trying to help you and this can unfortunately get in the way of trying to do more precise searching.