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Catalog Search Tips
Shortcuts: What type of search to use? | Wildcards in Keyword Searching | Sorting Your Results | Using Multiple Search Terms | Boolean Searching | Applying Limits | Browsing Tips & Tricks | Using the Search History
What type of search to use?
Our catalog has several different search options – “Quick Search,” “Power Search,” and “Browse A-Z,” not to mention the “Special Searches” options. So when do you use which one?
Quick search is designed for when you’re in a hurry. It’s the first search screen that comes up when you enter the catalog, and it lets you search for records with a particular word or words anywhere in a record or specifically in the Title, Author, Subject, Series, or ISBN.
Power search lets you search more precisely for exactly what you want. You can limit your search to items in a particular branch, to juvenile or young adult materials, by publication date, or by language. This is also where you can limit your search to movies, magazines, large print, audiobooks, or music.
Browse A-Z is for when you think you know about how the title/author/subject begins and you want to see an alphabetical list of titles/authors/subjects close to your guess. If you’re not sure about the first few words of the search though, you’re better off doing a keyword search on the words you’re certain of.
The Special Searches section offers simplified ways to search for audiovisuals, large print materials, and magazines (This can also be done within PowerSearch, sometimes more effectively.) There is also a link to the Juvenile Catalog for searching the children’s and young adult collections, a link to our Databases search page, and to our Community information database.
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Wildcards in Keyword Searching
Keyword searching looks for the exact combination of characters that you entered. For example, if you search for “collect” you will get only items with the word “collect” and not collection, collects, collecting, collected, or collective. To search for all of these terms together, you may want to use what’s known as truncation or wildcard searching. If you put an asterisk (*) on the end of your word, the computer will find the word you searched for as well as any words that can be formed by adding one or more letters in place of the asterisk. The wildcard character can be used at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. For example collect* will bring back derivatives as described above, c*ll will bring back call, cell, Carroll, and more, and *ly will bring back way more results than you’d ever want to see.
If wildcard searching covers several terms you’re interested in, but also another unrelated term, you may want to do a Power Search so you can use the Boolean search option where you search for your wildcard and “NOT” the extra unrelated term. See the section below on “Boolean Searching” for more information.
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Sorting Your Results
When you use the Browse A-Z search, your results will always be arranged alphabetically. This will be by author if you browsed by author, by title if you browsed by title, etc. For keyword searches though, you get a choice. Results can be left unsorted or sorted by authors, media, publication date, or title. If you don’t specify how you would like your results sorted, they will be arranged by publication date, with the most recently published books first. If you would prefer a different sorting option, you can select it in the dropdown menu of the Power Search screen before searching. The Quick Search page does not have this option prior to searching, but once you have performed the search and gotten your results, there will be a dropdown menu on the right hand side of the page allowing you to change the sorting.
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Using Multiple Search Terms
In both the “Quick Search” and “Power Search” screens, you have the option of using one or multiple search terms.
In “Quick Search” if you enter more than one word in a box or in multiple boxes, you will only get records for books that contain BOTH words. This means that if you add words to your search you will get fewer results, but those results should be closer to what you’re looking for. However, if one of the words you’re using is spelled wrong or is incorrect for the book you’re looking for, you won’t bring that book up. If you get no results, or fewer results than you were hoping for, adding terms to your search won’t help. Correcting spelling errors, removing search terms, or changing search terms could help get more results.
If you’re not sure of the full title, it may be worthwhile to use one or two words from that title in the keyword search, or even combine this with the author’s first or last name. If you’re not sure how to spell the author’s name, you may be better off searching only for words in the title or using Browse A-Z to browse by author. If you aren’t getting the book you want, try double checking your spelling or information, or getting rid of words you aren’t sure of.
For more on using multiple search terms, see “Boolean Searching” below.
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Boolean Searching
The “Power Search” page offers Boolean searching with dropdown menus between search boxes for “AND,” “OR,” “NOT,” and “XOR.” This type of searching is more powerful than the Quick Search as long as you understand how to use it.
Enter your words in different boxes, selecting what type of search you want each box to perform (general, title, subject, etc). Between words, select the appropriate relationship – “AND,” “OR,” “NOT,” or “XOR.”
If you choose “AND” or if you enter two words in the same box, they will be treated the same as in a Quick Search, where BOTH words must appear in the book’s record for it to come up.
If you choose “OR” records will come up if they contain the first word, the second word, or both words.
If you use “NOT” records with the first word will only come up if they DO NOT contain the second word as well.
Think of “XOR” as “exclusive or,” because one term excludes the other. This search will bring back results with either of the terms, but NOT BOTH.
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Applying Limits
If you only want to see search results for items that have a particular characteristic, you may want to use limits. You can apply limits before or after you search from the Power Search screen or after you search from the Quick Search screen.
You can limit your search to items at a particular branch, in a particular format, by target age, or by language. Simply click on the limits that are important to you and ignore any that aren’t. Limiting by format may be the most popular because it allows you to limit your results to Movies, DVDs, Videos, Magazines, Large Print, Audiobooks, Books on CD, Books on Cassette, Music, or the Maryland Collection.
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Browsing Tips & Tricks
Browse A-Z puts records in alphabetical order by the requested field. If you’re browsing by author, it’s in order by author, if by title, then alphabetical by title.
In the case of authors, use the format last, first.
You can type or not type words like “a,” “an,” and “the” and the records will be found either way.
If you’re not sure of the beginning of the title/author/whatever, then browse may not be for you. A keyword search may be more useful. However, if you’re pretty sure of at least the first few words, you can see what similar titles there are by browsing.
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Using the Search History
For a limited time after you perform a search (even if you’ve done another since then) you should be able to return to that search through the “History” link. Click on history and then either click the search terms you used to repeat the search or click on edit to make some changes to the search. Once the computer has been idle for a certain amount of time, your search history will disappear.
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