Here's an explanation of the pros and cons of each and what each search type is best used for:
| Type of Search |
Pros |
Cons |
Best For |
| Title Search |
- Narrows results
- Great for searching for journals, magazines, or periodicals by their title
- Finds a specific book title
|
- You need the EXACT title (or at least the exact beginning words of the title)
- The catalog is confused by punctuation so leave out that colon or dash
|
- If you have the exact title—this is the surest way to see if we own a book or other work (other than musical scores—visit our Scores page in the Music LibGuide to learn more)
|
| Author Search |
- Narrows results
- Returns only books written by that person (not anything with his/her name in it)
|
- Do you have the name spelled correctly? If not, you will get no results, or the wrong author.
|
- Getting a complete list of the books we own written by that author
|
| Subject Search |
- Narrows results
- Will lead you to other topic terms you may not have thought of
- Returns books which are really about your topic, not just about it in a general way
|
- You need to know the exact form of the subject heading
- Very focused terms may return too few results (but you can easily browse for similar subject terms)
|
- When you know what you want and you don't want anything else
|
