Advanced Searching

This search page is designed to let you enter multifaceted searches and search specific fields. It also provides for the use of several online aids and features that can help you to control the level of recall or precision in your search.

Note: The last set of checkboxes under the Subjects search line will be included in this page only if your Library is using a hierarchical vocabulary of broader, narrower, and related terms.

Note: A fictitious library collection, not the catalog that you are searching, is used in the sample searches/displayed items used throughout the online help system.

Main Section

Each of the initial search lines provides for searching a specific field or a set of related fields in the catalog records:

Titles:  Title, Alternate Titles, Journal/Parent Title, Series Ttitle

Authors and Other Names:  Authors (and affiliations), Editors (and affiliations), Corporate Authors, and Associated Institutional and Personal Names

Call Numbers:  Assigned shelf location (the item's "address")

Subjects:  Subjects and, if implemented, Thesaurus Terms

The options associated with one or more of these search lines follow.

• By clicking the arrow icon to the right of a search line, you have access to the index display of terms in fields relevant to the current search line, so you can make selections and paste terms into the search line, in a "ready to execute" search expression.
• Each search line provides for entering key words or a list of single and multi-word terms, separated by semicolons, where:
  • multi-word phrases, e.g., "educational technique*" will be searched automatically with an appropriate operator
  • the list of terms separated by semicolons will be searched automatically as "match any" (ORd) searches.
• Use the * for multi-character wildcarding at the end of a partial word.
• Each search line allows you to specify that an "exact match" search is to be executed. This option provides for precision when you want it, e.g., to retrieve just the one or more items with the single-word title of "Physics" and excluding all items in which the word "Physics" is included in other multi-word titles.
• You have a choice in the Authors and Other Names search line to have names in a semicolon list combined in a "match all" (ANDed) search to find items co-authored by the listed authors.
• In both the Authors... and Subjects... search lines, you can specify that any official names or terms used for those that you have entered be incorporated into your search — using the "include..." checkbox. For example, in searching for items in which AICPA is the corporate author, the search would include the fully spelled-out name, American Institute of Certified Accountants, so that you will retrieve items regardless of which version of the name is present in the catalog items. (Note: Click the information icon after each of these two "include..." checkboxes for more information.)
• In the Subjects search line, if your hit count is lower than you want, you can switch from doing just a subject search to having your terms used in a broader search, across other key content-related fields.

The differences in results shown below for applying these options in the Subjects search line illustrate the recall vs. precision results they may produce — where an exact match search reduces significanlty the hit count of 72 for keyword subject searches (see first screen capture), and inclusion of searches of the other fields increases the number dramatically.

Buttons and the Display List Box

• The Search button executes your search and automatically generates the default report (or the last one you selected on the Browse page).
• The Get Hit Count button executes the search and reports back the number of retrieved items (your hit count) but keeps you on the search page, so you can decide whether to modify the search before displaying the results.
• The Clear button empties all of the text boxes and check boxes so that you can start a new search.

The Display list box allows you to restrict the number of items to be displayed if you retrieve more than you want to browse but are not yet sure how to restrict the retrieval.

More Search Options

The second part of the page offers several additional search options.

Other Search (1) and (2)

Use of these search lines is similar to those already described above.

The searches in the More... section will be combined (ANDed) with any searches above in the top part of the page. For example, the 168 records retrieved in the Subjects... search will be ANDed with the results of the ORd set of words/phrases in Search (1).

If you enable the Use my operators checkbox, you can enter an expert search with your own choice of operators, as illustrated in the Other Search(1) shown below.

• The Other Search 1 and 2 lines provide for searching across all of the key content fields or in specific fields (see partial display below).

  

• From among the choices below, you can also specify how the two searches should be combined (see Operators for a description of each).

  

• If you select a specific search field from the list box to restrict your retrieval, the index display is also restricted to that field or set of fields. For example, if you selected "Subjects" from the list box, the index display would include just the Subject terms (see Using the Index section below).

Publication Dates

Enter a specific year or both a start and end date for the publication period of interest. Browse the index to get a sense of the coverage of the collection and, optionally, paste a year into the search field.

One-click Searches

The checkboxes in this section allow for excluding on-order titles and/or for restricting retrieval to those items linked to online electronic resources — either internal or external URLs or images/electronic files saved in an inhouse images/file repository system.

If you select both of the electronic resource search options, you will get the total set, which will then be combined with any other searches on the page to restrict retrieval to those with associated digital material.

Using the Index as an Online Search Aid

The list of search terms — full values and words — in index displays gives you a window into the composition of the collection you are searching: they represent the actual terminology used in the collection records that you can use in formulating a search.

When you click the arrow icon to request the list of search terms for the current search line, you are taken to the index display page with a partial list of terms, typically starting with the A's — terms from the field or set of related fields that will be searched in the current search line.

• You can move to another part of the index by specifying a character, partial word, or full word in the Show Terms Near: box and clicking Display.

  

• To view more surrounding terms, use the Page Up and Page Down buttons.
• Make selections, on one or more pages, of the terms of interest and, when done, click Paste.

Your selected terms will be pasted into the current search line separated by semicolons, for a "match any" search.

If you check Use My Operators, the terms you select from the index will be pasted into the search line in the form of an expert search, with the search field name, e.g.:

Recalling a Saved Search

Depending on how your system has been configured, you may have the option to recall searches set up by Library staff to represent either full searches on various topics or potentially useful search fragments that you can use as the starting point for your own formulations.

• Open the Pre-defined Searches listbox to make a selection.
• Click Recall to have the search lines associated with the saved search populated and to get a Hit Count report
• Modify the search as necessary and click Search to generate a report.