Ram Search is an all in one search tool for searching the library's collections. While it doesn't search everything the library has access to, it searches a very wide variety of databases and resources, and is a great place to start, or expand, your research. 

When you input text into Ram Search, it will search that text across the vast majority of the library's databases and resources, and return you any books, articles, or other results that match search. Once you've started searching there are many ways to refine your searches through Ram Search. 

After inputting a search in Ram Search you'll see the following filter options:

The first button "All Filters" opens the advanced filter list, allowing you to apply a wide variety of filters to your results. The second button, "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" will restrict the search to only articles which are from peer reviewed scholarly journals (it will exclude most books, newspaper articles, and non academic content). The Third Button "Full Text (Online)" will reduce the results to only items which can be available to online users. The Fourth Button "All Time [period]" will give relevant results for specific timeframes. 

The advanced filters are even more numerous and variable: 

You'll have to explore these to learn them in detail, but for example "Content Provider" allows you to limit your results only to specific databases.

If you need very precise searching tools than "Advanced Search" is the best tool available for searching the library's many collections. Advanced search gives you the option to search multiple terms, modified by so-called "Boolean Operators", which are just the conjunctions "And", "Or", and "Not". This allows you to refine your search to include two or more specific turns of phrase, variations on different word constructions, and allows you to eliminate similar sounding but irrelevant articles. You also have access to all filters and other modifiers for your search. If you'd like to learn more about advanced searching techniques, consider this guide.