Search tips

Use the Search box to search in all indexed fields (e.g. Author, Title) in catalogue records of all media types (e.g. Books, DVDs).

To quickly locate an item using terms from the title, author or subject, use the Guided Search. To perform complex searches for terms in specific fields or items of specific media types, use the Advanced search.

When you start typing a search word or phrase in the search box a word list will appear which comprises all indexed terms from all fields indexed (e.g. authors, titles, classmarks). To select a term from the wordlist, highlight it using either the mouse or keyboard up and down arrow keys then left-click or press [Return] to paste it into the Search box. To close the word list without selecting a term, press [Esc].

The following tips apply to searching using the general Search and Advanced search.

General search tips

• Searches are case-insensitive.
• The Precision setting determines how many of the words in the search phrase have to be present in a record, and how close together in a record they have to be, for the record to be returned by the search. To perform a search where you want all the search terms to be in the record, but not necessarily in the same field, link the terms with AND.
• When searching for ISBNs or ISSNs, do not include the hyphens.
• To search for an item using more than one of the authors' names, separate them with AND. For example, to search for a work by John Smith and Peter Jones, enter Smith AND Jones or Smith John AND Jones Peter or John Smith AND Peter Jones. The search phrase Smith Jones will not find the item: it will only retrieve items by authors named 'Smith Jones' or 'Jones Smith'.

Example
harry potter goblet fire	Finds records containing all the terms entered. Unless 'Freeform' precision has been set, the words need to be present in the same field for a record to be returned.

Complex searches

• Search terms can be combined using the Boolean operators AND, OR and AND NOT. These can be entered in either upper or lower case (some examples below use upper case for clarity).
• Link terms with AND to return only those records that contain both terms.
• Link terms with OR to return records that contain either or both terms.
• Link terms with AND NOT to find records that include the first term, excluding those records which also contain the second term.
• Search terms can include more than one Boolean operator. If you are using more than one, use parentheses to ensure that they are interpreted in the correct order.
• If your search term contains AND, OR or AND NOT and you do not wish them to be interpreted as Boolean operators, enclose the search in quotation marks.

Examples
america OR europe	Finds records containing either america or europe, or both words.
america AND europe	Finds records containing both america and europe.
america AND NOT history	Finds records containing america, excluding those which also contain history.
(america OR europe) AND history	Finds records containing history, plus either america, europe, or both america and europe.
war and peace	Finds records containing war and also containing peace.
"war and peace" and tolstoy	Finds records containing the phrase war and peace and also contain tolstoy. The second 'and' is interpreted as a Boolean operator: the first is not as it is within quotation marks.

Phrase searching

• To search for a phrase, i.e. to search for a series of words in the order entered, with no other words between, enter the phrase in quotation marks.

Examples
"it's a wonderful life"	Searches for all the words entered, in the order entered.
"war and peace" and tolstoy	Finds records containing the phrase war and peace and also contain tolstoy. The second 'and' is interpreted as a Boolean operator: the first is not as it is within the quotation marks.

Wildcards

• Use the wildcard ? to replace a single character.
• Use the wildcard * to replace one or more consecutive characters.
• Wildcards can be used at the beginning, middle or end of a word.
• To search for a term which contains * or ?, enclose the search phrase in quotation marks to prevent the characters being interpreted as wildcards.

Examples
speciali?ed	Finds records containing specialised or specialized.
p??ce	Finds records containing, for example, price, peace or place but not pumice, produce or police.
col*r	Finds records containing, for example, colour or color (but also collar).
child*	Finds records containing, for example, child, childhood or children.
"which?"	Finds records containing which? As it is enclosed in quotation marks, the question mark is not interpreted as a wildcard.

Range searching

• To search for a range of words or numbers, enter the first and last values separated by three dots. The values entered do not need to be words present in the index.
• To search for a range of dates, enter the first and last values separated by three dashes. Dates should be in the format d/m/yy or dd/mm/yy/dd/mm/yyyy. The current date can be entered as today, and dates relative to the current date can be entered as, for example, today-7d for seven days prior to the current date, or today+7d for seven days after the current date. Similarly, today-2m can be used to represent the date two months prior to the current date, and today-1y can be used to represent one year prior to the current date.

Examples
aa...am	Finds records containing terms between (and including, if they are present) aa and am.
1975...1977	Finds records containing any number between (and including) 1975 and 1977.
01/05/2013---12/7/15	Finds records containing any date between (and including) 1st May 2013 and 12th July 2015.
today-7d---today	Finds records containing any date between (and including) seven days before the current date and the current date.