Research Assistant
What you can learn from this page:
- What is Research Assistant?
- Accessing Research Assistant
- What does Research Assistant do?
- Considerations about using this AI tool for your research
What is Research Assistant?
Research Assistant is an AI-powered tool within UOW Library SEARCH. It allows users to make natural language queries and receive AI-generated summaries of academic resources.
Accessing Research Assistant
- From the Library homepage, select 'Sign in for complete results'.
- A pop-up window will appear, select 'Students & Staff' and sign in using your UOW username and password.
- Select 'Research Assistant', located at the top of the Library website.
What does Research Assistant do?
Research Assistant enables you to conduct a search, similar to Google, for academic content sources found within Library SEARCH.
When you enter a question into the search bar, Research Assistant will provide:
- An overview of its top five ranked academic resources related to your query. This will provide you with a starting point and big-picture view of your research topic.
- 'Overview of Sources' is created from summarising the top five source descriptions and abstracts.
- You can select 'View more results' within the Library SEARCH catalogue for further resources and to refine their initial search.
- 'Related research questions' option to adjust your question and search terms to yield more targeted search results.
Considerations to Note
- As with any AI-generated summary, its important to verify the sources yourself and critically evaluate the content to deepen your understanding of the topic.
- Use Research Assistant to generate ideas as you begin your search. For more comprehensive strategies, see the Effective Searching guide.
- Research Assistant does not search everything within Library SEARCH.
- For example, news content and content from certain database providers are excluded. You can view details of the content scope on the vendor website.
Further Information
Contact the Liaison Librarian team at: lib-liaison-services@uow.edu.au, for further questions regarding using Research Assistant to support teaching and learning in your subjects.
