Searching for Titles
The easiest way to search the library catalogue is to type one or more words in the Quick Search box at the top of the page, and then click Search. The search results include items with all of the search terms in either the title or author fields, or in headings or tags.
The Quick Search box appears on every page.
If you want to find an exact group of words, such as global warming, you don’t need to put these in quotes, as you do in some search engines. Just type the words. The items that appear at the top of the results will be the ones that include the phrase global warming in the title.
If you know the author or some words in the title, you can restrict your search by selecting Author or Title from the drop-down list. You can also search by Subject heading or Tag.
How Search Works
Search results are ordered based on the best match. The items at the top of the search results will be those that contain your exact search text, in the exact order you typed them (if you used more than one word). After exact matches, words in the title are given a priority, followed by author name, headings, and tags. Popular titles will be appear ahead of less popular ones.
You can filter your search results by selecting from the headings on the left side of the page. For more details, see Filtering Search Results and Collections.
Getting Suggestions
Not sure how to spell an author’s name? Select Author from the drop-down menu, and then type a few letters of an author’s name to see suggestions. For example, if you can’t remember if it’s Ernest Hemmingway or Ernest Hemingway, just type ernest h and then pause. A list will appear with suggestions:
Typing the beginning of the author’s last name — hem — would also display a list. Click the name to search on that name.
You can also use this feature if you want to browse subject headings and then use them to search. Select Subject from the drop-down list, and then type a keyword. For example, if you type gardening, you’ll see a list of subject headings about gardening. Click one to search using that subject heading.
Additional Search Features
You can restrict your search to exclude certain results. To leave out certain results, enter the word NOT (in caps) followed by the words to exclude. For example …
potter NOT harry
… will display titles by or about Beatrix Potter, but not titles about Harry Potter.
You can also search for titles only in a certain format or language. For example, if you are looking for the movie version of Black Beauty only, you could search using …
black beauty DVD
Or you could search for any Harry Potter titles in French in any format by entering …
harry potter french
Additional Search Notes
- Caps, spaces and punctuation are ignored, so searching for J.K. Rowling is the same as searching for j k rowling.
- If you know the exact ISBN number of a book, you can enter it in the search box.
- In your search results, you can click an author or artist’s name to do a new search for items by that author or artist.
- You can search by call number if you put the entire call number in quotes. For example, “J FIC Rowli”.
Advanced Searches
The Quick Search found at the top of every should provide excellent results for most of your searching requirements. For those occasions where you have a particular kind of search in mind, you can use Advanced Search. It has tools that enable you to describe precisely where and how you want to search. You can do Boolean searches using the controls on the page, or by typing directly in the custom Boolean query box. To create an advanced search, click the Advanced Search link at the top of the page.
For details, see Using Advanced Search.
Broadening Your Search
When you search using more than one term, the items that contain all or most of your search terms appear at the top of the results. The more words in your search, the fewer the results.
If your search returns fewer than 10 items, you’ll see a Broaden your search » link. Click the link to re-run the search for items that include any of your search terms. Items that include all or most of the terms will appear first. For example, suppose you search for electrical appliance repair and get 0 results. If you use the Broaden your search link, you would see a number of titles, including many that deal with appliance repair. The broaden your search feature relaxes the search rules to find more items.