Catalogue Help

Search the Library Collection

Type your search term/s into the box and click on the "find" button or press the enter key on  your keyboard. The default is to search "all fields". This finds results that are most relevant to your search terms and then ranks the results. Ranking is based on how many times the terms appear in the item record with terms found in key fields such as title and subject heading appearing higher. You can sort your results using the drop down menu.

Other fields include:

• Title - Use this option to search by title for any item held by the library, including journals, databases, videos, books and series
• Author - can be an individual, an editor, an organisation, a conference or a government department
• Subject - describe the main topic(s) of a book, journal, or other item, subject headings used in this library are from a list called Library of Congress Subject Headings
• ISSN/ISBN - finds items that match a publication's International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) or International Standard Book Number (ISBN). Included the hyphen for ISSN e.g. 0010-3519

Tips:

• Use double quotes to search exact phrases e.g. "declaration of human rights" 
• Use * to truncate e.g. comput* finds computer, computers, computing, computation etc
• Combine multiple search terms using AND (finds records that have all of the term/s) and OR (finds records that have any or both of the term/s). This is called Boolean Searching.

Narrowing Search Results

After performing an initial search, a list of facets will appear on the right side of the search results screen.

These facets (categories) include: Location, Format, Topic, Author, Language, Genre, Era and Region. Under each facet, a list of the most recurring terms in that category will appear in descending order. For example, "Author" displays a list of the most published authors related to the search.

Clicking on a link under the facet narrows the results. For example clicking on "ebooks" narrows the result list to show only those that are electronic books. Clicking on "more..." will display further options and you can choose as many as you like. Clicking on the red minus button removes that limitation from your results.

Item record

Clicking on a hyperlink of a title in the results screen takes you into the item record.

The item record shows basic bibliographic information. The information displayed will vary according to the type of material. Hyperlinks will link you to other works that have the same heading i.e. clicking on an author link will take you to other works by this author.

Under the holdings tab you can see the location and status of the item, making a request is available from this tab. Clicking on the description tab shows more detailed information such as physical description of the item, notes and the ISBN/ISSN. A table of contents tab will be visible if available.

The item record also has a Similar Items box on the right hand side, this allows you to see other editions and related items, to view click on the title hyperlink.

 "Cite this" displays the reference format using three popular referencing styles.  "Export Record" allows you to export the reference using bibliographic management tools.