PREV NEXT INDEX

Put your logo here!

Keyword Searches

The online library catalog contains thousands of records. Each record represents one title in the catalog. Within each title record, separate fields contain specific information about the work, such as the title, author, and subject. You can search these fields for keywords.

A keyword search in any field looks in all the search fields of the library catalog to find the keyword text. Other keyword searches narrow the search for the keyword only in the author, subject, title, or other specific fields.

Search for a keyword

Follow these steps to find titles containing your text in any field, or in a selected field, of the library catalog.

  1. Click Search on the menu bar, and click Keyword in the Search submenu.
  2. If you want to find only a certain kind of material, click the arrow symbol in the Limit by box, and select an option from the list. Your library may provide additional limiters, such as availability.

Example:
If you want to find only DVDs, select DVD in the Limit by list.

Note:
If your library handles course reserves, you can limit your search to materials reserved for courses. Click the Course reserve items only check box. For more information, see "Find an item on reserve".

  1. If you want to search a database other than the library, or select multiple databases to search, click Select Databases and choose the databases.

    For more information, see "Selecting Search Databases".

  2. If you want to have the search results sorted by a category other than the one displayed, click the Sort by arrow symbol and select a sorting option.

    Relevance sorts titles in the search results so that those that seem most likely to meet your needs appear first in the list. Most Popular sorts titles in the search results so that the titles most frequently checked out or requested over the past 120 days appear first in the list.

    When you select a sorting option that combines two categories, the results are sorted by the first category, then by the second.

Example:
You do a keyword search by subject. If you choose to sort by Author, then Publication Date, the titles about that subject are sorted first by author, then by publication date within the group of each author's titles.

  1. If you want to limit the search by library location, publication date, physical item material type, language, or target audience, or set the number of titles that appear on each search results page, follow these steps:
    1. Click Open Search Options.
    2. Select the settings you want.
    3. Click Set Search Options.

      See "Focusing Searches".

  2. Type the text to search for in the Keyword search for box, keeping these tips in mind:
    • Letter case, multiple spaces, and punctuation are ignored. Omit hyphens in numbers. However, you can include the following characters if they immediately precede or follow a letter or number (no space between): + # % $
    • If you type more than one word, your results may include materials with the words in any order. If you want to find the words in the exact order, begin the phrase with double quotation marks.
    • You can type a part of a word and use a wildcard character. The wildcard character asterisk (*) represents the rest of the word. For example, if you type King*, the results include words such as King, Kingsley, and Kingford. The question mark (?) represents exactly one character. For example, wom?n finds woman and women.
    • Common articles and prepositions-such as a, an, and, for, from, in, of, on, the, to, and with-are usually ignored in searching and sorting. Single characters are also usually ignored. If you want to include these words, enclose your search words in double quotation marks or do an exact phrase search (see "Phrase and Exact Phrase Searches").
    • If you leave this box blank and just select an option in the Limit by box (see step 2), the search is launched and your results include all the materials that fit your Limit by selection.
  3. Click the Search by arrow symbol, and select a search field from the list:
    • Any Field - All the indexed information fields
    • Title - Title fields
    • Author - Author fields
    • Subject - Subject fields
    • General notes - Notes fields
    • Publisher - Publisher field
    • Genre - Forms or types of materials, such as science fiction, romance, biography, bibliography, or large type books
    • Series - Series fields
    • ISBN - International Standard Book Number, a 13digit number that is assigned to a specific book or edition of a book when it is published
    • ISSN - International Standard Serial Number, an 8digit number with an optional letter code that uniquely identifies a serial title
    • LCCN - Library of Congress Control Number
    • Publisher No. - Publisher's number, the unique identifier assigned to the publishers of sound recordings, video recordings, printed sheet music, and other musical works
    • SuDoc - Superintendent of Documents classification number (identifier) assigned to government documents. The identifier can consist of letters and numbers.
    • CODEN - Identifier for scientific and technical periodical titles. The six-character identifier can consist of letters and numbers.
    • STRN - Standard technical report number (identifier) assigned according to ISO 10444 or NISO Z39.23 standards. The identifier can consist of letters and numbers.
  4. Click Go.
    • If the search is successful, information about titles is displayed in the search results list.

Note:
Some searches may find thousands of titles. You can focus searches before you launch them to yield fewer but more useful titles. See "Focusing Searches".

Note:
You may also see a more link next to the suggestion. Click the link to see more suggestions.

  1. To work with the results, do any of the following actions:
Related Information
PREV NEXT INDEX