Do a quick search with search buttons

Follow these steps to do a quick search of the library catalog from the portal page if your library offers quick search buttons.

1. Type a word or words in the Quick library search box.

: If you type more than one word, your results may include materials with the words in any order. If you want to find the words in the exact order, begin the phrase with double quotation marks.

: You can type a part of a word and use a wildcard character. The wildcard character asterisk (*) represents the rest of the word. For example, if you type King*, the results include words such as King, Kingsley, and Kingford. The question mark (?) represents exactly one character. For example, wom?n finds woman and women.

: Punctuation is usually ignored. However, you can include the following characters if they immediately precede or follow a letter or number (no space between): + # % $

2. Click a search button to start the search.

You may see any of these buttons:

: Anywhere - Looks for your text anywhere in the library catalog records.

Note:
If you type search text and press ENTER, without clicking a search button, a keyword search starts.

: Subject - Looks for your text in the catalog’s subject descriptions. The results will include works about the subject.

: Title - Looks for your text in the titles of works in the library catalog. The results will include works with your text in the title.

: Author - Looks for your text in authors’ names in the library catalog. The results will include works by authors with your text in the author’s name.

: Series - Looks for your text in series names in the library catalog. The results will include works in series, where the series name includes your text.

: Fiction - Looks for your text anywhere in the library’s records for fiction titles.

: Nonfiction - Looks for your text anywhere in the library’s records for nonfiction titles.

If the search is successful, information about individual titles is displayed in the search results list, or you may see a list of titles, authors, subjects, or series.

Note:
If no matches are found, you see a message. You may also see a Did you mean suggestion. You can click the suggestion to search for the suggested term. You may also see a more link next to the suggestion. Click the link to see more suggestions.

3. To work with the results, do any of the following actions:

: If you see a group of individual titles, navigate the results list and view more information about the titles. See Viewing Title Information. You can narrow your search results or do related searches (see Narrowing Results and Related Searches). You can add a title to a title list (see Working with Title Lists) or request a title (see Obtaining Materials).

: If you see a list of titles, authors, subjects, or series, you can browse through the list and select a list item to see the associated titles. For more information about browsing, see Browsing the Catalog. Once you see the associated titles, you can view more information about each one. See Viewing Title Information.

Related Information

~ Additional search methods - See the following topics:

: Keyword Searches

: Phrase and Exact Phrase Searches

: Browsing the Catalog

: Advanced Searches

: Boolean Searches

: Automatic Searches

~ Focusing your search - You can limit searches by library, publication date, language, and other options. See Focusing Searches.

~ Searching sources outside the library - See Selecting Search Databases.

~ Course reserves - If your library holds items reserved for courses at a school or college, you may be able to search for course reserve information and materials. See Finding Course Reserves.