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REMINDER: Resources designated as Reference materials or Library Use Only will not be loaned out.
PARC Library Catalogue Search
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How to Search Online Searching
Displaying Records After a Search
Type the word you want to find (women) or type
a phrase (neutralizing antibody response) to find those words,
in that order. To find variations of word stems, type an asterisk
at the end of one or more words (neutr* abnorm*). Use the symbols
& / ! between words or phrases to represent AND, OR, NOT.
Include a space before and after the symbol. Use the proximity
operators w# (within) and p# (preceding) to find words near each
other. See examples below.
Words joined by & / ! are evaluated in left-to-right order: pink & white / blue finds items that are pink and white, or items that are blue. Use parentheses to control evaluation order: pink & (white / blue) finds items that are pink and white or pink and blue. To find a date, use any reasonable format, including but not limited to the examples shown below:
Do not use a forward slash to separate date elements unless you surround the date with quotation marks ("12/31/05"). You can use the symbols & / ! between dates to do AND-OR-NOT searches. For example, May 2005 / June 2005 finds all dates in May or June 2005. You can do less than, greater than, and range searches for dates (see below). Doing less than, greater than, and "between" searches You can search for items greater than or less than a certain value, or within a range. This is most commonly done when searching for dates, but may also be done when searching for values or text. Use the symbols shown below. When used with a partial date, these symbols search from the beginning of the date (first day of the month or year). A range consists of two values, low and high, separated by a colon. Include spaces around the colon.
Case in query criteria is usually ignored (a search for suzy martin finds Suzy Martin). Punctuation is also ignored, except for the and-or-not symbols (& / !) and the colon for range searches ( : ). If you want these characters to be interpreted literally, use quotation marks ("HIV & AIDS") or replace the punctuation with a space (HIV AIDS). Displaying Records After a Search A successful search finds one or more records, which are displayed in your web browser as a report. Use the browser controls as you normally would, to browse, print, go back, etc. You can also:
Using the "Browse List" (loads rather slowly) If a search form includes a Browse button, you may click it to display the entire database entries for that search field. This eliminates trial-and-error searching and makes searching easier. Please note that the Browse list provides the full catalog list in the Title, Author and Subject fields and may take a few seconds to load. A pop-up window will appear. In the window you can enter the word or words you are searching for or scroll through the alphabetical listing and select the item you want and click on "Select." You may select "word" or "term" searching. Word searching will show individual words in the field as a separate item to be searched. Term searching will search the entire field as one item. Having trouble with a search? Some of the most common problems are listed below. I got the message "Unable to recognize
as a correctly formed query." If you cannot determine what caused the error, try a simpler search (e.g., just a word in a box) to see if it works. Use the Browse List button to construct the query, instead of typing criteria. If even simple searches don't work, contact the webmaster for the site. I found too many records. Try using a Boolean symbol (& / !) between words to construct more precise queries. For example, to find international information, not from Africa, search for international ! Africa. If the item you're searching for includes punctuation, substitute spaces for punctuation (search for HIV AIDS, not HIV/AIDS) or surround the item with quotation marks ("HIV/AIDS"). If you're searching for a date, don't use a forward slash between date components (for example, search for 12-12-98) or else surround the date with quotation marks ("12/12/98"). I didn't find any records. If you are not sure of the spelling, use an asterisk after the first few characters (colo*) or separate several possible spellings with a forward slash (search for color / colour). If you did a complex search, try simplifying it to eliminate confusion. Use the Browse buttons to view and paste items to search for. This eliminates guess-work. If you are searching for a URL, try typing it all in lower case. If your search includes Boolean symbols (/ & !) or range searches (:), put spaces around the symbols. Do not use words (and, or, not) for Boolean operators. You must use symbols (& / !). Try using / instead of & between words. Using / means either word can be present (john / paul finds John or Paul). Using & means both words must be present (john & paul will not find just "John" or just "Paul"). Remember that range searches involving partial dates start from the beginning of the range. For example: <1998 means "before Jan. 1, 1998." When I try to display records or change
forms, I get the message, "Your current query has expired.
Perform the search again." Having trouble using the Browse List? Some of the most common problems are listed below. The Browse List dialog is empty. To verify that the problem is with the Browse list (and not with the search screen), do a simple search in the same search box. If the search does not work, then the problem is not specifically with the Browse list. |
Search Hints For AND use & For OR use / For NOT use ! To truncate use * Use >, <, = to search years. Use : between dates to search a range of dates. |
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