Every item owned by an STLCC library is listed in the College's Library Catalog. Each listing is called a record. A powerful way to search for books on a particular topic is to perform a keyword search, which looks for records containing the words you use in your search.
Example keyword search: mound
- This search will find all records in the STLCC catalog which somewhere contain the word mound.
- Records normally include a book's title and author, as well as descriptions of its subject matter. In addition, a record may include a book's chapter headings or a summary of its contents.
- Therefore this search will retrieve all records with mound in any of these areas--even books by an author named Mound!
Narrowing your search with and. Example keyword search: mound and culture
- This search will find all records in the STLCC catalog which somewhere contain both the word mound and the word culture.
- By using and between keywords, you've specified that all of your keywords must be present in the record for it to appear in your results.
- One major reason to use and is that it lets you narrow broad searches (mound) to more specific topics (for instance, books on mound culture).
Using truncation. Example keyword search: mound* and culture
- Using an asterisk at the end of a keyword is called truncation, and lets you search for word variations.
- This example search will find all records in the STLCC catalog which somewhere contain the world culture, as well as the word mound or any words beginning with mound, such as mounds, moundbuilders, moundville, etc. For instance, this search would retrieve a book called Culture of the Cahokia Moundbuilders. (This is a made-up example of a book title.)
- Truncation saves you time by letting you search for multiple word variations via a single search.
