Search Tips
Use ADVANCED KEYWORD search for
- LIMITING by field, location, material type, language, publication date
- SORTING your results alphabetically by title, publication date or relevance
- BUILDING a search with multiple query boxes
Multiple Words
Use more words to narrow your search. You may enter them in one box or in individual boxes separated by operators from the drop down menus marked 'AND'. For example,
- education primary scotland
Phrase Searches
Search for an exact phrase by enclosing it with double quotes. For example,
- "highlands and islands"
- "roman empire"
Truncation and Wildcards
Words may be right-hand truncated using an asterisk. Use a single asterisk to truncate from 1-5 characters. Use a double asterisk for open-ended truncation. You may also use a question mark to replace a single character anywhere within a word. For example,
- education*
- environment* polic*
- fyodor dost**
- wom?n
Search Operators
Operators (AND, OR, AND NOT, etc.) can be selected from the drop down menus marked 'And' to connect query boxes. Use AND NOT to exclude words and the NEAR operator to retrieve records that contain the specified words or phrases within ten words of each other in the same indexed field. Parentheses group words together when using operators. For example,
- (indian OR pacific)
AND (ocean life AND NOT mammals)
- fife near council
Field Limits
Field limits may be selected from the drop down menus marked 'Any Field'. A field limit causes the system to search only the specified field for the specified word(s).
Or you can specify fields to search, using field abbreviation. The following field limits are supported:
Field limit | Meaning |
author: or a: | search only author fields |
title: or t: | search only title fields |
subject: or d: | search only subject fields |
notes: or n: | search only note fields |
rare: or f: | search only rarebook keyword fields |
For example,
Additional Limits
You can further restrict your search to a specified subset of the catalogue by selecting one of five options from the drop-down menu marked 'Collection'.
The default is VIEW ENTIRE COLLECTION, which will allow you to search across all of the material in the catalogue. The other specialised subsets are Journals, Rare Books, Audiovisual material and Electronic resources.
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