The Research Assistant (beta) is a new AI-powered feature that allows you to make natural language queries and provides helpful summaries of academic resources. 

To use the Research Assistant, you must first sign in to the Library catalogue.  Select the option on the top right corner. Then ask a question, and it will provide: 

• An overview of its top five ranked academic resources to answer the question. This may give you a helpful big-picture view of your research topic. 
• Citations for these top five sources with the option to view more results. 
• Related questions. Adjusting your question and search terms can yield better targeted search results.

Limitations

While Research Assistant is currently a beta feature, it can be a useful addition to searching our databases and e-resources starting point for your research.  Please be aware of the following limitations.

What it will NOT do:

• Make calculations
• Improve writing (use Copilot)
• Analyse single articles in detail
• Handle extremely broad research questions well, such as "give me peer-reviewed articles about bird migration." 
• Filter results for specified time periods, such as "give me the newest research on climate change"
• Search everything in the library’s collections – print items are not included
• It may not show results from the entire online resources the library holds. Newspapers are not included, and some Open Access and commercial publishers may not appear as well. Searching the regular Library Catalogue - not using the Research Assistant - Additional searches in the Library catalogue itself or Google Scholar will cover these resources.

Research Assistant is a great starting point for commencing your research that can be further explored on the resources accessed from our E-Resources & databases list.