Other Searches

How to Search

1. Click on the Other Searches tab.
2. Enter search terms.
3. Click on the pull down menu to choose a type of search.



A search by Title, Journal Title, Author, Subject, or Call Number scans an index and returns every title, author, or subject that begins with what you entered in the box.

For example, a search on the subject "medi" would return the topics: medicaid, medical, medicine, mediterranean and medieval, among others.

Use these searches when you know the beginning of the title or the author's last name or a call number.

Search by TITLE or JOURNAL TITLE

1. Enter the title in exact word order, omitting initial articles; a, an, the
2. Truncation is automatic so you can enter just the first few words.
   • Example: Midnight in the gar
3. Do not enter subtitles.

Search by AUTHOR

• Enter author's name, last name first, and as much as you know of the first name. Example: Hemingway Ernest

Search by SUBJECT

• We use Library of Congress Subject Headings.
• Enter the subject, omitting all punctuation. Example: Cookery Thai
• If you get no results, try a Keyword-Guided search.
• If using a person's name as the subject, enter last name first.
• Truncation on the right is automatic. Nutrition brings up all headings beginning with that word.

Search by CALL NUMBER

• Include punctuation and spaces. Example: TJ163.2 .R345 1997

Search by KEYWORD RELEVANCE

• Use Keyword Relevance or Keyword Boolean searches when you are not sure of an item's data and you want the results in relevancy order.
• A Keyword Relevance search looks for words located anywhere in a record, and brings back results in a relevance order ranking as pre-determined by a formula in the search engine. The protocols used in the relevance search are similar to those used in web search engines; they are NOT standard Boolean protocols.
• There are two Keyword Relevance search options:
  • Keyword Relevance [AND is assumed]; use this when you have more than one word or phrase and want results which include ALL the terms
  • Keyword Relevance [OR is assumed]; use this when you have similar terms and want records with AT LEAST ONE of the terms.
• Use quotation marks to search phrases. Example: "family therapy"
• Use ? after a search term to truncate:. Example: forest? retrieves forest, forestry, forester, foresters etc.
• Use + before a term to indicate an essential term. Example: +careers
• Use * before a term to indicate an important term: *explorer
• Use ! before a term to prohibit a term. Example: !vegetarian
• Put spaces between each term.
• Do NOT use boolean operators AND, OR, NOT .

Search by KEYWORD BOOLEAN

A Keyword Boolean search also searches for words located anywhere in a record and brings back results in a relevance ranking; however, keywords are entered in a search statement using the Boolean operators(AND, OR, NOT), possibly using truncation (?), nests (parentheses around sets) or phrases ("between quotation marks")