About OneSearch

OneSearch has an AI tool called Research Assistant (RA).

RA does a few specific tasks to help you with your research.

Ask RA your research question and it will:​

• Find five articles and/or ebooks in the library databases related to your research question​

• Summarize the five articles into a brief Overview, giving you an overall introduction to your research topic​

• Suggest other library sources beyond the five summarized ones​

• Suggest alternative research questions related to your original one

To start using RA, from the library homepage, look for the RA link near the OneSearch box:

If you are already in OneSearch, you can access RA by the link near the top of the screen:

Research Assistant (RA) works best when you give it a prompt that sounds like a research question.

These are examples of prompts or questions that would work well in RA:

• What role do nurses play in preventing patient falls?
• Is cognitive behavioral therapy an effective treatment for anxiety?
• How can a human resources department help improve employee retention?

And your question doesn't even have to sound like you're already an expert on your topic! The following types of questions work well in RA, too:

• Is green tea good for you?
• Are women paid the same as men?
• How can college students avoid distractions while studying?

Use the menu just to the left of the box where you type in your research question. By clicking on the menu, you'll get options to focus your search by type of source (for example, you can limit to peer-reviewed articles only), as well as the option to limit by publication date:

RA will answer your research question with these resources and tools:

1. Top five most relevant articles for your research question--these are the articles RA uses to write its Overview. RA also gives a link to articles related to your topic, beyond the top five:

2. An Overview of your research topic, written by RA and based on summaries of the top five articles it found:

3. Research questions related to your original question. These can show you different aspects of your research question to explore, aspects you might not have thought of before:

Research Assistant is just that, an assistant who helps you get started on your library research.

Research Assistant can never do a whole project for you, and of course you would never just copy an RA Overview and submit it as your own work!

Research Assistant helps you by finding five library articles related to your topic, then summarizing those articles into a general overview of your topic.

Your job is to take what you learned from the Overview and explore your topic further:

• Review the five articles that RA found: check how accurately RA summarized each article in the overview, and mine the articles for further ideas or facts that you can use in your project.

• Click the "View More Results" link in RA to discover other articles besides the five that RA used for the Overview.

• Explore other aspects of your topic by examining RA's Related Research Questions. You don't have to change your topic! But the related questions may help you explore useful facets of your topic that you can incorporate into your project.