The following searching tools and techniques can narrow or broaden your search.
Boolean, positional, and relational operators allow you to focus your search by linking search terms and defining the relationship between them.
iBistro allows a set of terms to be marked as a single phrase by enclosing the expression in single quotes. This enclosed search expression must be matched in the catalog exactly as typed in the search field.
iBistro allows search expressions to be grouped or nested using parentheses. iBistro searches the expression located in the innermost set of parentheses first, and then continues the search, moving outward to the terms at the edges of the expression.
Every record in the library's database has a particular format consisting of standard entry tags. iBistro allows a search to be limited to certain fields and entries within a bibliographic record.
Similar to searching by specifying entry tags, iBistro allows one or more of these entry tags to be represented with a keyword index synonym name (such as AU for author or TI for title).
Bibliographic records can be searched by their internal database catalog key (CKEY). Any of the following searches will retrieve records based on their catalog keys.
iBistro ignores specified words when searching the catalog, allowing iBistro to search on the keywords of an expression. These stopwords are usually articles, prepositions, or conjunctions, such as a, an, as, at, be, but, by, do, for, if, in, it, of, on, the, and to, among others.
Enclose your expression in double quotation marks to prevent the stopwords from being ignored.
iBistro allows the symbols ? and $ to be used to represent substitution and truncation.
To individually search numbers in a list, you must type a space between each number. iBistro searches numbers separated by commas as if the numbers were not separated. The following examples may help you search numbers in a list.
The library's catalog may contain "bound-with" items, which is an item that consists of several titles bound together as one physical item. One of the titles is considered the parent title; the remaining titles are the children. The catalog can be searched for any of the children titles as well as the parent title, even if the system does not have a copy record for any of the titles.
For example, if your library catalog included a Wizard of Oz bound-with item, it might include the following items.
The book might be the parent item, with the other two items listed as children. Although all three items are bound together, each one can be searched separately in the library catalog.
Your library's catalog supports 256 characters in its full bibliographic record. However, not all terminals can display all 256 characters. In iBistro, you can use replacement characters when searching a term containing a transliterated character.
To see a browse list of possible search matches, leave the Search For field blank, or type in the first part of the search term.
Limit a Search
Power Search
Search Again from the Search Results Display
Search for Electronic Texts
Search the Internet
Search for an Item Using the Z39.50 Protocol
Search Other Library Catalogs
Search Results