Follow these steps to find titles containing your text in any field, or in a selected field, of the library catalog.

1. Click Search on the menu bar.

2. If you want to find only a certain kind of material, click the arrow symbol in the Limit by box, and select an option from the list.

Example:
If you want to find only DVDs, select DVD in the Limit by list.

3. If you want to have the search results sorted by a category other than the one displayed, click the Sort by arrow symbol and select a sorting option.

Relevance sorts titles in the search results so that those that seem most likely to meet your needs appear first in the list. Most Popular sorts titles in the search results so that the titles most frequently checked out or requested over the past 120 days appear first in the list.

When you select a sorting option that combines two categories, the results are sorted by the first category, then by the second.

Example:
You do a keyword search by subject. If you choose to sort by Author, then Publication Date, the titles about that subject are sorted first by author, then by publication date within the group of each author’s titles.

Note:
When you choose to sort by publication date, the sorting of serial titles in the results may not be obvious since the publication date is not displayed in the brief results for these titles.

4. If you want to limit the search by library location, publication date, physical item material type, language, target audience, or collections, or set the number of titles that appear on each search results page, follow these steps:

a) Click Open Search Options.

b) Select the settings you want.

c) Click Set Search Options.

5. Type the text to search for in the Keyword search for box, keeping these tips in mind:

• Letter case, multiple spaces, and punctuation are ignored. Omit hyphens in numbers. However, you can include the following characters if they immediately precede or follow a letter or number (no space between): + # % $

• If you type more than one word, your results may include materials with the words in any order. If you want to find the words in the exact order, begin the phrase with double quotation marks.

• You can type a part of a word and use a wildcard character. The wildcard character asterisk (*) represents the rest of the word. For example, if you type King*, the results include words such as King, Kingsley, and Kingford. The question mark (?) represents exactly one character. For example, wom?n finds woman and women.

• If you leave this box blank and just select an option in the Limit by box (see step 2), the search is launched and your results include all the materials that fit your Limit by selection.

6. Click the Search by arrow symbol, and select a search field from the list:

• Any Field - All the indexed information fields

• Title - Title fields

• Author - Author fields

• Subject - Subject fields

• General notes - Notes fields

• Publisher - Publisher field

• Genre - Forms or types of materials, such as science fiction, romance, biography, bibliography, or large type books

• Series - Series fields

• ISBN - International Standard Book Number, a 13-digit number that is assigned to a specific book or edition of a book when it is published. Type the wildcard character * at the beginning and end of the number you enter for best results.

• ISSN - International Standard Serial Number, an 8-digit number with an optional letter code that identifies a serial title. Type the wildcard character * at the beginning and end of the number you enter for best results.

• LCCN - Library of Congress Control Number. Type the wildcard character * at the beginning and end of the number you enter for best results.

• Publisher No. - Publisher’s number, the unique identifier assigned to the publishers of sound recordings, video recordings, printed sheet music, and other musical works

• SuDoc - Superintendent of Documents classification number (identifier) assigned to government documents. The identifier can consist of letters and numbers.

• CODEN - Identifier for scientific and technical periodical titles. The six-character identifier can consist of letters and numbers.

• STRN - Standard technical report number (identifier) assigned according to ISO 10444 or NISO Z39.23 standards. The identifier can consist of letters and numbers.

7. Click Go.

• If the search is successful, information about titles is displayed in the search results list.

Note:
You may find thousands of titles. You can focus searches before you launch them to yield fewer but more useful titles.

• If no matches are found, you see a message. You may also see a Did you mean suggestion. You can click the suggestion to search for the suggested term.

Note:
You may also see a more link next to the suggestion. Click the link to see more suggestions.

8. To work with the results, do any of the following actions:

• Navigate the results list and view more information about the titles.

• Narrow your search results or do related searches. .

• Add a title to a title list.

• Place a request for a title.