Catalogue Search Tips

Choose from one of the search types (details below). Enter the information you know.  If you see the item you are looking for you can access the catalogue record for that item. The catalogue record tells you:          

• details of the item
• which library the item is held at
• whether the item is on loan and when it is due back
• whether anyone else is on the waiting list

You can also read reviews for many items, find suggestions for other similar books and request items online yourself  directly from the catalogue record.

Search Tips

• Title browse - use title browse if you know the exact title of the item. Title browse gives you your title in an alphabetical list of titles. Tip: omit “the”, "an", "a", from the start of your title.
• Author browse - use author browse if you know the exact name of the author. Tip: always put the surname first, e.g. King, Stephen
• General keyword - use general keyword if you aren’t certain of a title. Enter the keywords you are sure about, in any order. You can use any combination of author, title, subject or series keywords. Tip: if you can only remember the main character from a fiction series, you can often find the author this way e.g. “Stephanie Plum”. Tip:  using general keyword with only very common words can give you too many results.
• Subject keyword  - use subject keyword for quite specific subjects. E.g. calligraphy, Buddhism. Tip:  if you get no results, switch to a general keyword search.
• Series keyword - use series keyword to find all books in a particular series. Especially useful for children’s series books. Tip:  spelling matters!