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Search Help

General Tips

Entering words in the keywords field will find matches to Author, Title, Illustrator, Publisher, or Description.

Try narrowing your searches by category by selecting the category you are most interested in from the pulldown menu.

Boolean Searching

Boolean searches use operators to perform more specific queries. Using "and," "or," and "not" (Boolean operators) allows you to refine the search by adding or removing specific terms.

By design, our search engine performs a Boolean "and" search with all words entered in any of the search fields. For example, entering "Stephen King" in the author field, will find all instances of "Stephen" and "King" in the author column in the database. Entering "Stephen King" in the keywords field will find all instances of "Stephen" and "King" in the author, title, publisher or description fields. DO NOT include the boolean operator in your search (i.e. do not enter "Stephen and King").

The search engine will always perform a Boolean "and" search, unless you select the radio button next to Boolean "OR" (located under the keywords field). Choosing this option will tell the search engine to use Boolean "or" logic with any keywords entered in the keywords field only (Boolean "or" does not apply to any other fields besides keywords). For example, entering "Stephen King" would now find all instances of "Stephen" or "King" in the database (much broader search).

The "minus symbol" (-), can be used to perform a Boolean "not" search. For example, entering "-Stephen King" in the author field would find all instances of author "King" but not "Stephen" King. Note that the minus symbol (-) must directly proceed the word that you wish to exclude (do not include spaces between the minus symbol and the word). Hyphens in hyphenated words will not be treated as Boolean "not". The minus symbol can be used in any search field.

Trailing Wildcard (*)

The trailing wildcard (*) can be used to enter the the first part of a search word. For example, entering "Rob*" would yield the following results: "Rob," "Robert," "Roberts," "Robinson," etc. This is helpful when you are unsure of the spelling of a word, or whether the word in a title is singular or plural. Trailing wildcards can be used in any field, or can be combined with the minus symbol (e.g. "-Rob*" would exclude "Rob," "Robert," "Roberts," "Robinson," etc.).

Sample Searches:

1. Query: I am looking for Hugo Award Winning Science Fiction Books.

Category: Science Fiction and Fantasy
Keyword search: Hugo
Keyword Boolean: AND

2. Query: I am looking for Hugo or Nebula Award Winning Science Fiction Books.

Category: Science Fiction and Fantasy
Keyword search: Hugo Nebula
Keyword Boolean: OR

3. Query: I am looking for books by the author King, but not Stephen King.

Author search: King -Stephen