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online catalog: basic searching
Online Catalog: Basic Searching
What is the Online Catalog?
The online catalog provides information about the Library’s resources. It will tell you if we have something in our collection, and how to locate it. It
includes information on items in print, on CD, on microform, and online.
The catalog is not case sensitive, so you can input your searches in UPPERCASE, lowercase, or Mixed Case. Initial English language articles such as "a", "an", and
"the" are ignored by the system. For example, "The Life of Roscoe Pound" is searched as "Life of Roscoe Pound". The ampersand (&) is automatically converted to
the word "and" and apostrophes are ignored. So "Tip O’Neill & the House" (if such a title existed!) would be searched as "Tip Oneill and the House". Most other
punctuation marks are replaced by spaces. A title such as "U.S. Constitutionalism" will be searched as if it were three words, "U S Constitutionalism." If you
omit the space between the U and S you will get different results.
You can search the catalog by keyword, title or series title, author, author and title, subject, or call number. Below is a brief introduction to each of these
methods of searching.
Keyword Searching
A keyword search will search for the specified word(s) in any author or title fields. Some words - including and, but, that, this, from, and other such
words - are not indexed as keywords and therefore cannot be searched. The keyword search is one of the broadest searches available. This can be very useful or it
can be very dangerous and result in too many hits. For example, searching for "court" in the keyword index will result in over 400 hits!
Broadening or Narrowing your search with...
Truncation - Use the asterisk "*" at the end of a search word or string of letters to find all the words beginning with those letters. For example, adolescen* will
retrieve adolescent, adolescents, adolescence, etc.
Limiting - After searching, click on the Limit This Search button. A screen will appear with options to limit your search by year, material, language, publisher,
location, or words in the title, author, or subject.
Boolean Operators - Boolean Operators allow you to combine or limit the words you use in a search. If you use "OR" - juvenile OR adolescent - you will find records
which have either of those words. Using "NOT" - environmental NOT waste - will find records that have the word environmental, but will remove any of those that also
have the word waste.
The system will assume an "AND" if no operators are used between two terms, so entering "constitutional law" will be interpreted by the system as "constitutional
AND law".
Author Searching
Enter an author search, last name first, with as little or as much of the author’s name as you know. Holmes; Holmes Oliver Wendell; Holmes O; Holmes Oliver; etc. You
do not need to enter a comma between the names, and remember the periods after initials are read as spaces and apostrophes are ignored. The system will find entries
which appear in the catalog record as authors, editors, or contributors to works. You can also search for corporate authors or government agencies as authors.
Title Searching
A title search is performed in the order in which the words are entered. You may enter as much or as little of the title as you know. Remember that initial articles are
ignored, but little words within the title are recognized. A search on "law torts" will not produce any hits in a title search, but "law of torts" will find some records.
Author/Title Searching
The author/title search allows you to combine the two searches above. In a sense, it’s kind of an automatic limiting feature, as mentioned above. Simply enter the
author’s last name (or corporate or government author), then as much of the title as you can.
Subject Searching
The subject searches the Library of Congress subject headings in the catalog record. The subject headings are standardized headings developed by the Library of
Congress. Many of these headings reflect common search terms, and duplicate words that are found in the titles of works. However, because it is a standardized
list, there can be some unexpected surprises. Check with the Reference Librarian to access the library’s list of subject headings, or use the keyword search as
an alternative.
Call Number Searching
Call numbers help place books with other books covering similar topics. There are different numbering schemes, including Library of Congress Call Numbers, Dewey
Decimal System and the Superintendent of Documents numbering of government materials. You may, at some time, find that you have a "SuDocs" number and you want to
know if we have that information. You can enter that number in a call number search and find out.
If you need help, don’t hesitate to ASK A LIBRARIAN!
