What is Primo Research Assistant?
- Primo Research Assistant (Beta), is a generative AI-powered tool which allows you to search the SCU Library catalogue using natural language questions.
- It analyses descriptions and abstracts from trusted academics resources to generate an overview of the tool's top five ranked relevant sources to answer your question. In-text references are also included to show how each contributed to the response.
- Primo Research Assistant is not suitable for comprehensive searches, but it is useful for quick searches and is good starting point for commencing your research and gathering initial insights on a topic.
How to use it?
- To use Primo Research Assistant, you must first sign in to the Library catalogue (click on My Account to sign in).
- Select the Research Assistant (Beta) icon in the toolbar at the top of the page and then enter your research question. It is important to provide clear and detailed questions to get the best results.
Example question: How does vitamin D deficiency impact overall health?
- Results generated will provide an overview of the top five relevant academic sources with in-text references and links to full text sources if available. Important: Please be aware that some sources may not be available in SCU Library's online collections.
- There is also an option to view more results, view related results, refine searches and search related research questions on topics similar to your prompt question.
- Your previous search results are saved between sessions, but can be deleted if no longer required. Research Assistant keeps a history of your last 200 searches.
Limitations (or things to keep in mind)
- Primo Research Assistant does not search everything in the library catalogue. It only searches selected online content providers and excludes print resources, so it can miss important sources for your topic.
- Each question stands by itself, so follow-up questions are not currently supported. You can re-run the same search question, but the top five most relevant results might differ.
- Search results may include sources that aren't available in our library and may recommend resources with full-text restriction.
- Summaries are based on the abstracts and descriptions of sources only, which means it can miss details in the full text of the sources themselves.
- The five sources are ones that the Primo Research Assistant tool determines to be relevant rather than based on objective evaluation methods.
- It is recommended that users verify the accuracy and relevance of information in/from the results and the citation details of the sources.
Use for student assessments
- Please make sure to consult your unit assessor or check your assessment instructions to confirm if you are able to use a GenAI tool like Primo Research Assistant for your assessments.
- For information on using GenAI ethically at SCU see Using generative AI tools.
Further information
