How to search our catalogue

Basic keyword searching

All searches on the main search page are Keyword searches. A general keyword search will look for your keywords in any part of the item record including the notes, publisher, author(s), subject(s) and title. Simply type in the word or words you are looking for and click the relevant button. The catalogue will search for any item records that have those terms anywhere in the item record.

For example try the following searches:

• elephants to search for item records that have elephants located somewhere in the record
• Australian animals to search for item records that have both Australian and animals located somewhere in the record

Searching by Author, Title or Subject

A general keyword search may retrieve too many items that aren't what you are looking for. In this case an Author, Title or Subject search will look for your keywords in selected parts of the item record. If you are specifically looking for an author, you would click the author button, a title you would click the title button etc.

• grisham and click 'Author' to search for titles by John Grisham
• elephants and click 'Title' to search for records that have the word elephants in their title
• elephants and click 'Subject' to search for records that have the word elephants in its subjects

More help with searching

• Refine your search: covers limiting to material types, using wildcards, AND, OR and NOT and searching for phrase.
• Search tips: general tips for searching.
• Making links to catalogue searches: use our nice URL tool.

• Borrowing items: once you've found it in the catalogue, here's how to find it on the shelf or place a hold on it, borrow it, return it and what we do about overdue items.