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Quick search
This is the search box that can be found on the home page.
This is a keyword search of many fields appearing in the catalogue record. Enter the words you want to search for in the search box. These can be individual words multiple words or a phrase.
For example, if you want to search for 'shipwrecks', type those words into the search box and press the return key or the search button.
How to make your quick search better
If you want to a search for the phrase ‘sydney harbour bridge’ enclose it quotation marks like this "sydney harbour bridge" and you’ll only get those records with the phrase appearing in them.
Using the truncation character '*' is a good way to broaden your search and find items with a similar root word. For example, to search for anything related to 'yachts or yachting', type 'yacht*' into the search box and press the search button.
By typing ‘scrimsha*’you will find the words ‘scrimshaw’ ‘scrimshaws’ and ‘scrimshanders’ Truncation is also very useful for spelling variations in names e.g. a search of the author field using ‘hoffman*’ retrieves the authors ‘hoffman’ and ‘hoffmann’.
You can even use the truncation charcater in the middle of the word. A good example of where this is useful is if you’re not sure if it’s alan or allan villiers use ‘al*an Villiers’ to find the author ‘alan villiers’.
Quick search is a very broad search and might give you quite a lot of hits. The results will be displayed in alphabetical order by title.
Look at your search results and the subject and author terms we’ve given to them in the catalogue. Using the links to these authority terms can be a very useful way to help focus your initial search to books written by a specific author or on a particular subject.
Advanced search
This can be found under the advanced search tab and gives you more options to focus your search more finely and search specific fields within the catalogue record or confine your search to specific types of resources.
First choose the field you want to search from the drop down box on the left hand side. Enter single words or combinations of words or a phrase in the text box.
If you place quotation marks (") around your search terms this will automatically be treated as a phrase. If you place more than one term in a search box this will automatically AND them together. Truncation (*) can also be used here.
By selecting the YEAR field and RANGE search option to restrict your search to a particular year or range of years.
You can build more complex searches by entering terms in the other search boxes and by using the AND OR and NOT options from the drop down list in the second row.
For even more sophisticated searches a range of different types of search options including phrase and range are also available from the drop down boxes in the middle. Clicking on the question mark symbol on your screen (?) will give you more information about how these search operators work.
Attachment search. Selecting the attachment search field enables you to search the text of files that have been attached to catalogue records. e.g. pdf or word documents. This will retrieve the catalogue record containing the document with your search terms. You'll need to open up the document to view the terms.
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