How to do Keyword Searches
Why use Keyword?
With Keyword search you can find publications by typing words from the title, subject, author, editor, notes and/or publisher. When you first use the catalogue, or when you click the Start Over button, it will go to the keyword search. You can also click the blue Keyword tab at the top of the screen.
If you know the exact title of a book it is quicker to use Title search.
How to search by Keyword
Type a single word, or a phrase (e.g. climate change), and click Submit. Your results will always be ranked by relevance. You can select an additional sort (date, reverse date or title) from the 'Sorted By' dropdown menu
How to narrow a search
For a more focused search you can add keywords, combining them with AND. Add more topic words, or an author or editor name if known, e.g.
- climate change and mitigation
- climate change and Stern
Another way to focus a search is to use quotation marks. This will leave the order of the words unchanged, e.g.
- "cultural diversity" finds more specific items than cultural diversity without the quotation marks
How to widen a search
To widen your search you can use alternative keywords, combining them with OR, e.g.
- climate change or global warming
Another way to widen a search is to leave out the last few character/s of a word and replace them with * or **, e.g.
- behav* to find behaviour, behavior, behaving etc. where * replaces up to 5 characters
- Dosto** to find Dostoevsky or Dostoyevsky, where ** replaces 5 or more characters
Limiting your search
Limits are another way to make a search more focused and to reduce the number of results you get.
Electronic items
Limit your search to e-resources, e-journals or e-books, by using the second dropdown menu before you submit your search.
Other limits
Other limits can be applied after your search. Click the Modify Search button
at the top of the screen where your results are displayed. Then add the required limits, as shown below:
- location (e.g. Engineering)
- language (eg Chinese)
- material type (e.g. music score)
- nature of contents (eg legislation)
- to limit by publisher or by a range of publication years, type the publisher's name and/or the dates in the relevant boxes.
See also more information about language searching.
Go to Keyword search now.