An end user, Sally, is searching for a specific, known item by title. Sally is on DSpace’s home page and noticed a search box in the side navigation accompanied by a button which reads “Search”. Below the search box and button, a link is shown which reads “Advanced Search”. Sally enters the title into a search box on the front page, hits return, and is presented with a list of results.

The list of items which are shown in the search results show the following information for each item: title, authors, type of item, whether the item has a publicly accessible full-text associated with it. Sally also notices that the way the search results are rendered is similar to the way they are rendered on the browse-by pages.

The item Sally was searching for appears at the top of the list because the title matches the search. Sally clicks on the item title and is presented with the item page.

An end user, Sally, is searching to see what graduate work has been done at the university on a specific subject, propeller aerodynamics. Within the thesis and dissertation collection, she searches for "propellor aerodynamics" and is presented with a list of titles. These titles are ranked according to their relevance (if the term appears in the metadata, the item appears higher in the ranking), but she can sort by title, date of publication, and author if she wishes. She then decides she wants to add a qualifier to the search "post stall aerodynamics" and is presented with a smaller set of results.

Sally wants to find an item where she remembers only part of the title. When she does this search, she finds that the word is very common and the results are in the hundreds. She remembers the year the item was published, so she goes to the advanced search screen and limits her search to title and year. The item she is looking for is in the top results.

For each of the search queries which Sally performs, only items are shown for which Sally has read permissions.