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:
Your library may provide a digital collection that you can search and access
online in the same way that you search for other materials. Materials
in the collection may include images, video clips, sound files, and
text files. If you want to restrict your search results to digital collection
materials, select Digital Collection
in the Limit by box. For information
about using digital collection search results, see Accessing
Digital Collection Materials.
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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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:
b) Select the settings you want.
See Focusing Searches.
6. 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.
: 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.
7. Click the Search by arrow symbol, and select a search field from the list:
: Any Field - All the indexed information fields
: General notes - Notes fields
: Genre - Forms or types of materials, such as science fiction, romance, biography, bibliography, or large type books
:
ISBN - International Standard
Book Number, a 13
:
ISSN - International Standard
Serial Number, an 8
: 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.
: If the search is successful, information about titles is displayed in the search results list.
Note:
You may find thousands of titles. You can focus searches
before you launch them to yield fewer but more useful titles. See Focusing
Searches.
: If no matches are found, you see a message. You may also see a Did you mean suggestion. You can click the suggestion to search for the suggested term.
Note:
You may also see a more
link next to the suggestion. Click the link to see more suggestions.
9. To work with the results, do any of the following actions:
: Navigate the results list and view more information about the titles. See Viewing Title Information.
: Narrow your search results or do related searches. See Narrowing or Widening Results.
: Add a title to a title list. See Working with Title Lists.
: Place a request for a title, or purchase a title. See Obtaining Materials.
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~ Additional search methods - See the following topics:
: Phrase and Exact Phrase Searches
~ Course reserves - If your library holds items reserved for courses at a school or college, you may be able to search for course reserve information and materials. See Finding Course Reserves.