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Catalogue: Searching: How to

Searching the Library Catalogue

To find any item in the library's collection using the catalogue all you need is type what you want find in the search box and then click      Search  .

This is the Catalogue's standard search function and any items that match all the words you enter will be shown, not matter where they are in the item's record.

If you want to limit your search, to just the title of an item for instance, you will need to use the Advanced Search function.

Library Catalogue

Hints and Tips

If you are using the catalogue remember the following

Order: The order you type the words in don't matter, if you want to search for a particular phrase you can use "quotation marks."
Common Words: You don't need to enter all the words, just the major ones. This is especially true of words like the or a which are likely to appear in most items records.
Spelling: Make sure you have spelt the words you are looking for right. Some items may have the American spellings of words, color instead of colour for instance. If your original search doesn't turn up a result try changing the spellings.
Wildcard Searching: If you add * at the end of what you are searching for, such as union* it will search for all words that start union like unions, unionise or unionism.

 

What you can search for

When you search the catalogue you will can search for any of the following:

Title: This is any word that appears in the title or subtitle of the item.
Author: This is the name of any people who wrote or edited the book. You can put the name in any order.
Subject: These are words and phrases that have been added to the record, that describe what the book is about.
Keyword: This is any other word that appears in the item's record, including publisher.