Search tips

1. Keyword Searches

The features below apply to keyword searches; they do not apply to Boolean or exact phrase search.

1. Variant of search words

Singular and plural forms: Type dictionary to also find dictionaries
English and American spelling: Enter color to also find colour

2. Wildcarding

Use* to match multiple letters in a word. This is a very important feature while working with Cyrillic languages.

Ukrain* will provide you with Ukrainian, Ukraina, Ukraine, Ukrainska, etc.
Type ukrain* and get 10881 items. The search without the asterisk will retrieve only 34 items.

 Spell correction

 If your search words finds less that ten matches an alternative spelling that produce more matches will be suggested.

Stop words

Articles and prepositions are ignored in keyword searches: a, about, an, and at, by, for from, into, of, on, or, the, to.

Note: For Boolean searches go to the Advanced Search.

2. Advanced Search Options

You can perform fielded searches and search by author, title, subject, and call number. Also, you can use Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT, NEAR, ONEAR (“ordered near” operator).

You can also use Advanced Search to list a category, such as Czech DVDs, Croatian journals etc.

For example:

You would like to see which Bulgarian journals the library has. Go to Advanced Search, in the Format field select Journals and in the Language field chose Bulgarian. Click on Search and find 226 items.

3. How to use Logical (Boolean) Operators

The Logical (Boolean) operators, 'and,' 'or,' and 'not,' can be used in your search to make it more effective. Insert them between searching words.

AND
This search narrows your search and finds all of your keywords in the same catalog record/article citation
For example
Democracy AND Estonia will provide you with materials the library has on the topic.

OR
This search combines different words for the same concept and will find 'any' of the words
For example
Soviet union OR USSR

NOT
This search excludes concepts from your search.
For example
moravia NOT bohemia provides you with materials the library has on Moravia excluding Bohemia

russian music NOT soviet provide you with materials on Russian music excluding ones classified as Soviet.

Note: use NOT carefully because you may eliminate valuable relevant items

Note: Boolean search available at the bottom of the Advanced Search tab. Boolean and Advanced Search do not support  wildcarding, variants of searched words, and stop words.

More information on the Boolean Search could be found at:
http://toroprod.library.utoronto.ca/iBistro_helps/English/boolean.html

4. Refine Results

The left panel shows the groups found within your search results. You can click on any item to filter search. The groups in some categories are nested into larger ranges. For these categories, click again to narrower range:

 Subject time period

Subject geographic area

Language

In order to see more groups click on View More in any category.

5. View Results

Hit lists are sorted by relevance. If you would like to see the titles or authors alphabetically click on Title or Author. Also, you will receive your results from earlier to the last year of publication. In order to reverse this click on Publication year.

6. What can you do with your results?

In order to see record details, click on the item.

As on many systems you can mark, e-mail, print, save, add to My. library or to refworks.

      mark     e-mail    print     save,  mylibrary,  refwork.

You can chose this action on an individual item or you can add items to your Marked Records folder and then perform the above actions.

7.View Record Details

 Previous Next  

Page through detailed records

To remove any of your search step click on  

Explaining tab in a detailed record

Holdings tab Item location and availability. Please note that if you see a message

There are no current holdings for this record.

Details tab   Item description (catalogue record).

Subject tab   Subject terms, plus broader and related subjects where applicable.

8. How to narrow your search?

1. Add new words to your search, by entering new keywords and checking

 within results.

2. Choose a refinement from the left panel. Only choices relevant to your results are shown.

3. Search for an exact phrase by using double quotes. For example, “prague spring”, “velvet revolution”.

9. When is data updated