Finding the right books in the Library Catalog often means more than a simple keyword search. The Library help pages explain simple searches, but this may not be enough to find just the right book. After you have picked off the easiest finds, here are some tips to dig deeper:
In Esearch, go to the "Advance Search" page to combine keywords, such as "language learning" AND autis* Note that in Esearch you must capitalize AND or OR, because it does not recognize the words as operators if they are in lower case.
Use wildcards to optimize search results.
The question mark (?) will match any one character and can be used to find Olsen or Olson by searching for Ols?n.
The asterisk (*) will match zero or more characters within a word or at the end of a word. A search for Ch*ter would match Charter, Character, and Chapter. When used at the end of a word, such as Temp*, it will match all suffixes Temptation, Temple and Temporary.
Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search.
Browse the ‘virtual shelf’ in Esearch.
Do a search and click on the title of one book (not an ebook), going to the new results tab that will open (blue-ish page). Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the virtual browse array.
In Esearch you can search by subject heading (not keyword). This is useful when you are using subject words that have broad application, such as "study and teaching"
Do this in Advanced Search by changing the "All Fields" box to read "Subject Terms." Try a subject terms search for "Applied Linguistics" and then add other regular keywords to the other boxes.
To discover other subject terms, find one useful book in the search results, click on preview and scroll to see the subject headings, and click on a subject heading to begin browsing all the other titles that were tagged with it. You can also look on the left column of your search results for suggested subject terms.
When in doubt, ASK A LIBRARIAN!
