How do I search the Library Catalogue?
Last Updated: Dec 16, 2025    Views: 4

When searching the Library Catalogue, LibrarySearch, try these strategies to get more relevant results for your topic:

Use Quotation Marks to Search for a Phrase

If you want specific words to appear together, put them in quotation marks. This will search for those words as a phrase, instead of searching for those words individually.

e.g., “stress relief” "women in advertising"  

 

Use AND, OR, NOT to Broaden or Narrow your Search 

Broaden or narrow your search by linking together two or more terms using the connectors AND, OR, and NOT. These connectors are called Boolean Operators. 

AND 

AND narrows a search. If you combine two keywords with AND, you get fewer results because both words must be present in the results found. Use AND to combine different concepts in one search.

e.g., "computer science" AND history 

 

TIP: By default, LibrarySearch will search for multiple words together as an AND search.

 

OR 

OR broadens a search; you get more results because OR looks for each of the words separately, as well as all words when found together. OR is often used to link together related words.

e.g., teenager OR youth OR adolescent

 

NOT 

NOT narrows your search; you get fewer results because it excludes terms from your search.

e.g., Pluto NOT Disney 

 

Use Parentheses to Group Concepts

Use parentheses (also called brackets) to group concepts when you use two or more connectors.

e.g., alcohol AND (adolescents OR teenagers) 

This search will retrieve items about alcohol AND adolescents, as well as items about alcohol AND teenagers. 

TIP: LibrarySearch will search for the words inside the parentheses before searching for the rest of the words.

 

Use Truncation and Wild Cards Character to Save Time 

Truncation and wild cards can make your search more efficient.

Truncation

Add an asterisk (*) to the stem of a keyword to find that stem plus anything that comes after it. 

e.g., child* will return results that contain child, childhood, and children 

Truncation saves you time when searching, since you don't have to search for child, childhood, and children separately.

Wild Cards 

Use a hashtag or number sign (#) in the middle of a keyword to represent a single or multiple letters: 

e.g., wom#n will return results that contain both women and woman 

Wild cards saves you time when searching, since you don't have to search for woman and women separately.



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