Library tutorial for science
Section 4. Searching for books on a topic
in the Library catalogue

Use the Library catalogue's subject options to find books on a topic.

• Getting a good search result depends on using appropriate search terms. If you can't think of terms, use the sources described in section 3.
• Use a range of broader, narrower and related terms e.g. search for kangaroos but also for Australian marsupials or Australian mammals to find books with chapters on kangaroos.
• In your search results, look at the words used in book titles, contents, subject headings. Use these words as search terms to extend your result.
• Sort results by date since recent books often refer to earlier work.
• Note any useful citations listed in books you read.

The options for subject searching are:

1. Keyword (use and, or, not," ")

This option within Basic search searches title, author, subject headings and notes.

• Truncate your terms with ?: mammal? finds mammal, mammals, mammalian etc

• Combine terms with and, or, not and group them with brackets (see Searching with AND, OR, NOT):
  fire and vegetation - finds books with both terms present
  fire or burning - either term present
  (fire or burning) and vegetation - bracket related terms
  vegetation not grassland - the second term cannot be present

• Search phrases in quotes: "gene therapy"

• Search hyphenated words such as hand-book in quotes with or without the hyphen and also search for the single word spelling:"hand book" or handbook

Question Which of the following would you search in the Keyword (use and, or, not," ") option to find books on lunar volcanoes? volcanoes on the moon "lunar volcanoes" moon lunar volcan? moon or lunar and volcan? (moon or lunar) and volcan? (moon and lunar) or volcan? Answer You would search (moon or lunar) and volcan? Either moon or lunar needs to be present so use an OR between the terms. Volcan? must also be present so AND it with the moon terms. The ORed terms need to be bracketed. Otherwise, the catalogue would search the AND first as moon or (lunar and volcan?) i.e. all books about the moon regardless of whether they deal with volcanoes. volcan? is truncated with a ? to find volcano, volcanoes, volcanic, volcanism You cannot search phrases like volcanoes on the moon or lunar volcanoes without quotes "". You will get an error message. You can search phrases such as "lunar volcanoes" with quotes but this is likely to be too restrictive. You'll miss any books that don't use that exact phrase. Use phrases mainly when they are accepted standard terminology e.g. "nuclear magnetic resonance".

2. Guided Keyword Search

• Truncate terms with a ?

• Choose
  any of these if you want at least one of the terms e.g. for alternative terms.
  Choose all of these if you want all of the terms to be present.
  Choose as a phrase for words next to each other.

• Choose:
  Any Keyword to search title, author, subject headings, notes or
  one of the listed fields to restrict searches to a single field such as Title.

• Combine the first line of terms with the second.
  Choose AND if you want both groups of terms
  Choose OR if you want either group of terms
  Choose NOT if you do not want the second group of terms but be aware that this may also remove records of interest if they happen to contain terms you want as well as those you don't.

Question Which of the following would you search to find books on lunar volcanoes? Answer You would search: 1. for the reasons given in the answer above for the Keywords (use and, or, not," ") option. You cannot enter ( ), OR or AND within the Guided Keyword search boxes.

3. Subject Heading option

The Library adds subject headings to catalogue records for books. They are useful when:

• keyword searching produces too many books of marginal interest
• keyword searching is ambiguous e.g. 'evolution' as a keyword could produce books on evolution of political systems or books on evolution of biological organisms
• you need suggestions for extra subject terms
• you want books about people or organisations but not those by them.

There are several ways to use subject headings in a search.

• The easiest is to search for a book you know to be useful and click a subject heading link in its Record view to reach other similar books. In this example, click Extinction (Biology) or Catastrophes (Geology).

  

• Another way is to enter a term in the Basic search Subject Heading option. You may need to try a few terms. You get a list of subject headings.

  

  Click a heading such as Catastrophes (Geology) to get a list of books.
  You can click the Info button that's against some headings to get suggestions for related search terms.

Question Which of the following are subject headings that you could use to find books on lunar volcanoes? lunar volcanoes moon surface lunar geology volcanoes on the moon Answer To determine which subject heading is used for a topic, just try it. Here, in separate searches, try lunar, then try moon, then try volcan and browse the subject headings lists that result. There won't always be an exactly relevant heading. In this example, moon surface or lunar geology could be useful. You should also look at subject headings for volcanoes or volcanism or the moon, because books with these broader headings may have sections on lunar volcanoes.

4. Limits

Consider limiting your results by language, date, type of material. Use Limit or More Limits on the search screen or Post Limit on the results screen.

5. Google Books

The catalogue does not search the full text of books but only their titles, authors, subject headings and notes.

For specialised topics you may want to search the full text of books through Google Books. A Google Books result links to online sample pages which include your search term. You can then look for the full book in the Library catalogue. Note:

• Google Books does not replace a catalogue search. Many books still won't be found through Google Books.
• Google Books may lead to a fairly minor mention of a topic within the text, so look at the table of contents to assess the usefulness of the book.
• The Library does not necessarily have books found through Google search.

Back to tutorial main page | Continue to section 5