Start by taking our introductory tutorial for library search. You can use advanced library search to find items based on the keywords you specify. This guide gives tips on how to structure your search terms and limit your search. For more information see our tutorial on how to create a search strategy.
By default, a keyword search will search through these fields for each catalog item:
These fields are not searched:
You can add an asterisk * to the end of a word to search for all possible endings of that word. You must have at least two letters before the asterisk.
Searching for instruct* will show results for:
If your truncated search gives you a message of "no entries found," try adding more letters before the asterisk. This can happen when there are too many search results.
You can use ? as a wildcard to replace a single character in a word. The question mark must be preceded by at least three characters.
Searching for wom?n will show results for:
You can search for multiple keywords by connecting them with AND, OR, or AND NOT (known as Boolean operators).
Operator | Action | Example |
---|---|---|
AND | Narrows a search by requiring that both keywords are found. | A search for guggenheim AND bilbao would find both "Museo Guggenheim Bilbao" and "Guggenheim Museum Bilbao." |
OR | Broadens a search by looking for any of the words entered. Word order does not matter. | A search for (k-6 OR primary) AND teaching will find records with either “k-6” and “teaching” or “primary” and “teaching.” |
AND NOT | Excludes words from search results. | A search for cell AND NOT phone will find records with only the word "cell" and not include those with "phone." |
To search for an exact phrase, enclose it in quotes. This retrieves all records containing that phrase anywhere in the record, sorted by publication date (newest to oldest).
This is especially important if your phrase includes Boolean operators (AND, OR, AND NOT). For example, use quotes to find "To be or not to be."
Searching keywords or phrases will return results based on relevancy in up to five groups, from “most relevant” to “other relevant,” depending on where the word or phrase appears in the record. Within each group, records are displayed by publication date (newest to oldest).
You can deactivate relevancy ranking by changing some of the options on the advanced library search:
You may search a sub-collection and/or location using the advanced library search and selecting an option for "Search in" under Add Limits. You can search within:
You also add limits for language, location, format, publisher, and year of publication. To find all materials that match a limit criteria, use an asterisk (*) by itself in the first search box, then choose one or more limit options.
You can search for the following characters:
@ "at sign"
$ dollar sign
% percent sign
# pound sign
& ampersand (interchangeable with "and")
These punctuation characters are converted to a space in the search expression:
: colon
. period
_ underscore
\ backslash
= equals sign
/ forward slash
; semicolon
, comma
^ caret
` backtick