Knovel Interface Basics

The Knovel database opens on the "Browse All Subjects" page. Click on the house icon to get to the search interface, which is more useful.

The "Browse all Subjects" homepage in Knovel with the "Home" icon enclosed in a red box.

After clicking, we see a page that resembles other search interfaces. We have a text box for keywords as well as options for "Advanced Search" and "Property Search."

Screenshot of the Knovel Basic Search interface

The first thing we notice is the tab selection at the top of the page (with the options Search Knovel and Property Search). Search Knovel will return relevant literature (books, conference proceedings, etc.) based on our keywords. Property Search will return relevant technical information (values, charts, graphs) contained in literature. For now, we will focus on the Search Knovel option.

As an example, we will search for the keywords Circuit Design by typing them in the text box and then clicking the search icon (Note: although we capitalize the terms in the text box, Knovel does not require capitalization or differentiate it from lowercase letters).

The "Search Knovel" text box with the text "Circuit Design" typed in. The search icon is enclosed in a red box.

This search should return 3900+ results.

Notice on the results page: The default sort order for results is rank by relevance. Click on the dropdown menu to select sort by Publication Date.

A screenshot of the results page for the search "Circuit Design." The "Sort By" dropdown menu is enclosed in a red box.

In the next section, we will narrow down these results to a more usable number of resources.