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Using the Library Catalog

Specifying a Specific Record Field to Search

Searching terms within specific fields

To limit your search terms to a specific field (author, title, subject heading, call number, etc.) either:

  1. On the Advanced Search page, select Keyword searches in specific fields such as Title Keyword, or Author Keyword.
  2. Use field codes to limit search words to specific fields.

Field searching with Advanced Search

Once in the catalog, click on the Advanced link immediately to the right of the Find It search box.

Screenshot of the catalog search bar with the hyperlinked Advanced term circled in red

 

Once in the Advanced search, separate your search terms into the relative fields you would like to search. Fields are labeled by row.

Advanced search rows with the words: cyborg* OR droid* or bionic in the row labeled Keyword and the phrase "time travel" in the row labeled Subject

Field searching using field codes

Field Codes may be used in keyword searches. For example, title_aux_search:cathedral AND creator_aux_unstem_search:carver

Put searches of more than one word within parentheses, otherwise the first word is searched in the specified field and the second word is searched in the full database. For example, journal_title_search:(social AND policy)

Put phrases in quotations marks. For example: journal_title_search:("kenyon review")

 

Stemming

Several fields have the ability to be searched either stemmed (automatically including variant endings) or unstemmed (exactly as searched). If you see a field with _unstem below, you can remove that portion of the field to search stemmed. For example, journal_title_unstem_search: will turn off stemmed searches in the journal title fields, and journal_title_search: will enable stemming.

Outside of using field codes, nearly all fields are auto-stemmed by default. The exception is Author keyword, which is deliberately unstemmed.

 

Full list of field codes

Field Name Field Code Search Examples
Author Keyword creator_aux_unstem_search: creator_aux_unstem_search:hemingway
Title Keyword title_aux_search: title_aux_search:("cloud atlas")
Journal Title Keyword journal_title_unstem_search: journal_title_unstem_search:conjunctions
journal_title_unstem_search:("social forces")
journal_title_unstem_search:(social AND economics)
Series series_unstem_search: series_unstem_search:("solid state physics")
series_unstem_search:("literary biography") AND poets
Subject subject_unstem_search: subject_unstem_search:(dickens AND expectations)
Form/Genre genre_unstem_search: genre_unstem_search:("ethnographic films")
Publisher publisher_unstem_search: publisher_unstem_search:sage
Place of Publication place_of_publication_unstem_search: place_of_publication_unstem_search:philadelphia
Conference conference_unstem_search: conference_unstem_search:solvay
Corporate Author corporate_author_unstem_search: corporate_author_unstem_search:("university of pennsylvania")
ISBN/ISSN isxn_search: isxn_search:0521875838
isxn_search:0521878*
Publisher Number (for music, sound, video) publisher_number_search:

publisher_number_search:MCA
publisher_number_search:19843

Call number call_number:

call_number:("BF575.H27 L85 1999")
call_number:GV1469*

Language language_search:

language_search:french

Contents notes contents_note_unstem_search:

contents_note_unstem_search:("song of myself")

Record (MMS ID) mmsid:

mmsid:9941447343503681

OCLC oclc_id_ss: oclc_id_ss:841916845
Publication date publication_date_s:

publication_date_s:1987

   

 

 

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