The easiest way to search the library catalog is to type one or more words in the search box at the top of the page, and then click the Search button (the magnifying glass). The search results include items with all of the search terms in either the title or author fields, or in headings or tags.
If you want to find an exact group of words, such as global warming, you don’t need to put these in quotes, as you do in some search engines. Just type the words. The items that appear at the top of the results will be the ones that include the phrase global warming in the title.
If you know the author or some words in the title, you can restrict your search by selecting Author or Title from the dropdown list beside the search box. You can also search by Subject heading or Tag.
How Search Works
Search results are ordered based on the best match. The items at the top of the search results will be those that contain your exact search text, in the exact order you typed them (if you used more than one word). After exact matches, words in the title are given a priority, followed by author name, headings, and tags. Popular titles appear ahead of less popular ones.
You can filter your search results by selecting from the headings on the left side of the page. For more details, see Filtering Search Results and Shelves.
Getting Suggestions
Not sure how to spell an author’s name? Select Keyword from the dropdown menu, and then type a few letters of an author’s name to see suggestions. For example, if you can’t remember if it’s Ernest Hemmingway or Ernest Hemingway, just type ernest h and then pause. A list of up to five suggestions will appear.
Typing the beginning of the author’s last name — hem — would also display a list. Click the name to search for that name.
You can also use this feature if you want to search for a book or movie, but aren’t sure of the exact title. For example, if you’re not sure how to spell azkaban, just type harry potter and you’ll see harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban as a suggestion.
Additional Search Features
You can search for all titles in a specific format, or for a format in combination with an audience or language, by using the “smart search” feature when performing a keyword search. Instead of looking for these words in titles or author names, search returns the entire library catalog, and then applies filters based on what you type. You can use:
- Format, alone or with an audience or language term
- Audience (children, kids, teen, adult) with a format
- Language (any) with a format
You can also add the word new to a smart search, to limit your results to titles your library has acquired in the last 180 days.
Some examples:
- ebooks
- dvds spanish
- new kids books
- teen graphic novel
If your search contains words besides format, audience and language, it will be interpreted as a regular search. For example, kids movies dog or new music rhianna would not be treated as smart searches.
- Caps, spaces and punctuation are ignored, so searching for J.K. Rowling is the same as searching for j k rowling.
- If you know the exact ISBN number of a book, you can enter it in the search box.
- In your search results, you can click an author or artist’s name to do a new search for items by that author or artist.
- You can search by call number if you put the entire call number in quotes. For example, “J FIC Rowli”.
Advanced Searches
The quick search found at the top of every page should provide excellent results for most of your searching requirements. For those occasions where you have a particular kind of search in mind, you can use Advanced Search. It has tools that enable you to describe precisely where and how you want to search. You can do Boolean searches using the controls on the page, or by typing directly in the custom Boolean query box. To create an advanced search, click the Advanced Search link at the top of the page.
For details, see Using Advanced Search.
Changing the Search Results Display
By default, search results group all available formats of a title together in a block. This allows you to easily determine which formats your library owns, so that you can choose the one you want. Formats that are currently available appear in the group before formats that are not currently available to borrow. If you don’t need a specific format, you can choose one that is available now.
The grouped search view displays 10 groups, and the actual number of titles varies.
If you prefer, you can show each format as a separate item in your search results. For example, if your library owns print, eBook, audiobook and downloadable audiobook versions of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, you would see four separate cover images and the associated information for each format. Search displays 25 titles per page, and the results are ordered by popularity.
To change your search results to individual cover view, click the Jacket view button.
Click one of the other two buttons to exit the jacket cover search view.
Broadening Your Search
When you do a keyword search using more than one term, the items that contain all or most of your search terms appear at the top of the results. The more words in your search, the fewer the results.
For a keyword search, if there are no titles that include all of the words, you’ll see a Broaden your search link at the top of the page. Click the link to re-run the search for items that include any of your search terms. The items with the most matching words will be first.
For example, suppose you search for electrical appliance repair and get 0 results. If you use the Broaden your search link, you would see a number of titles, including many that deal with appliance repair. The broaden your search feature relaxes the search rules to find more items.
I got 0 results for my search. What should I do?
Here are a few things you can try if your first search isn’t successful:
- Check your spelling. On your results page, you may see a “Did you mean?” link with a suggestion. If not, review what you typed.
- If you searched by author, title or tag, trying searching by keyword.
- Did you type the author’s name with the last name first? You don’t need to type kinsella, sophie. Just type sophie kinsella.
- If you know the ISBN of a title, use that as the search keyword.