www.accd.edu/district/iic/Research Guide for Human Sexuality.doc

Searching the Libraries Catalog Available from the Purdue University Libraries homepage ( http://www.lib.purdue.edu ), the Catalog is a database of information about materials available in the Purdue Libraries, including: books periodicals (i.e. journals, magazines, newspapers) audio-visual (media) materials government publications conference proceedings technical reports Purdue theses & dissertations links to e-books, e-journals, and online databases Search Options Assisted Search select this option when you want some assistance in constructing a search statement. Basic Search offers a variety of search types: Select Keyword Search when you want the greatest control over combining terms and are familiar with Boolean operators, truncation, and nesting. Select Author, Title, Subject, or Call # Search when you already know specific information, such as the author or exact title, the Library of Congress Subject Heading, or an item's call number. Select Relevancy Ranked Search when you want a weighted set of search results. Quick Search available directly from the Libraries home page; similar to Basic Search, but with only selected types of searches. Course Reserves select this option to locate materials for specific classes.
Assisted Search The Assisted Search guides you through the construction of a search statement that can combine all the
elements of your topic. You can find records using terms that are located anywhere in the record, or that appear
only in specific parts of the record (e.g., author, title, publisher, etc.). If you enter more than one word in any of the Search For boxes, the drop-down menu options allow you to specify
how those individual words are combined: Any of these searches for any one or more of the terms; this option broadens your search results; All of these searches for each word, in any order; this option narrows your search results; As a phrase requires that the words appear exactly as you entered them, in that order; this option narrows the search and is the most precise. The Search By options allow you to select where in the record the terms must appear. Keyword Anywhere is the
broadest search, finding terms that appear in any field throughout the record. The truncation symbol (?) may be used in the Assisted Search to find words with variant endings. Keyword Search A Keyword Search finds the selected words or phrases anywhere in a record. It may be used for a simple single-
term search, or for more complex searches that combine multiple terms from one or more fields of a record.

The following search features may be used in the keyword search option: Boolean Operators are used to combine terms: o AND narrows a search by finding all terms in a record Example: Internet and publishing o OR broadens a search by finding any one or more of the terms in a record Example: writing or advertising o NOT narrows a search by excluding terms from the record Example: publishing not advertising Phrases must be enclosed in quotation marks o Example: world wide web Truncation broadens a search by finding all variant endings of a word stem; use the question mark (?) o Example: publish? (finds publish, published, publisher, publishing, etc.) Nesting groups your terms into sets o Example: (internet or world wide web) and (writing or publishing)
Author Search The Author Search will locate items by an author's name. An author may be an individual writer, an editor, a
company, an organization, or a governmental body. The general format for entering an author name is Last name (space) First name. Omit commas, periods,
apostrophes, and most punctuation; hyphens should be retained. Searching a name will take you into a list of author headings, from which you can select the appropriate records.









The numeral under Titles (to the left of the Headings column) indicates the number of titles the library has under
that heading. Click the heading link to display information on the items and their locations. RESEARCH TIP: Not sure of the author's name? If you know the title of a work by that individual, do a title
search and click on the author's name. If you remember only part of the author's name, try an Assisted
Search, specifying that your words be searched in the author field. Title / Journal Title Search A Title or Journal Title Search will locate items by searching only the title field for the exact title. Some search hints to remember Omit initial articles (a, an, the, der, la, etc.). Include articles that occur within the title, but not at the beginning of the title. o Example: To find The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, enter journal of the acoustical society of america If you don't know the entire title, just enter the first part of the title and it will automatically display all titles starting with those words. o Example: To find A Tale of Two Cities, you could enter tale of two Click the underlined title to see information on the item and its location. RESEARCH TIP: Unsure of the exact title? Try an Assisted Search, entering some of the key words that
you are sure of, and specify that they be searched in the title field.
Subject Search The Subject Search looks for terms that match the subject headings in the subject field of the records. Subject
terms must conform to the terminology and the format designated by the Library of Congress or the National
Library of Medicine. After a known subject heading is entered, a list of subject headings will be displayed. By scanning through the list
of headings, you may discover other headings that will be relevant to your search as well. The numeral under Titles (to the left of the Headings column) indicates the number of titles the library has under
that heading. Click the heading link to display information on the items and their locations. RESEARCH TIP: Borrow terms from Subject Headings to use in Keyword Searches or Assisted
Searches. They may be more effective than relying on random terms or your own vocabulary.
Call Number Search A Call Number Search will retrieve the record for a specific item or will identify related items in the Libraries'
collections. Most call numbers use the Dewey Decimal Classification System, but other classification systems are used for
some specialized collections, such as: U.S. government documents media materials Purdue University theses and dissertations children's literature collection Regardless of the format, searching a call number will display a list of titles, beginning with the call number that
you entered (or the closest match). If you wish to view a specific record, enter the full call number for that item. If you wish to browse for titles in a broad subject area, enter just the first few characters of the call number. For example, to see a list of items related to film, enter 791. You may browse forward or backward in the list to "electronically browse the shelves" of the entire Libraries'
collection. Relevancy Ranked Search The Relevancy Ranked Search option searches for any word(s) or phrase(s) that appear anywhere in the records.
Results are displayed using a relevancy algorithm, similar to the way many web search engines work.
The Relevance column indicates the relevance (weight) each title has to the search criteria entered. The most
relevant titles display at the top of the list. As the titles become less relevant to the search criteria, the dots in the
column decrease in number and change color.
All words will be searched, including stopwords, such as "and," "or," "not," "the," "a," etc. Words and phrases can
be typed in any order. Unless otherwise specified, multiple terms will be combined using the "OR" operator.
Special characters may be used for a more focused search: A question mark (?) indicates truncation, to search for variant endings of terms. Quotes surrounding multiple words will search for the specific phrase. A plus sign (+) indicates an essential term which must be in the record An exclamation point (!) excludes the word from a record. Limits Use Limits to narrow your results by restricting them to certain years, language, media, types, or locations within
the Purdue Libraries. Search limits may be set before or after a search.
To set limits before searching, click on the Set
Limits button from any search screen, or use the
Quick Limits, which provides a shortcut to
selected limits for periodicals, media, e-journals,
or items published in the last five years. Pre-set
limits do not apply in author, subject, or call
number searching.


To set limits after a search, click the Limit Results button. Post-search limits apply to
results from any type of search. Print / Save / E-mail Results If you want to print or save citation information for records you have retrieved, select the records you want and
then mark the appropriate check-box in the Save Options section at the bottom of the screen. Select the format in which you want to save the record(s). To print, click the Format for Print/Save button and then use the Print option in your web browser. To save, click the Format for Print/Save button and use the Save As option under the File menu option in your web browser. To e-mail results, enter the e-mail address to which the results will be sent and click on the E-mail Search Results button. sbm/eb, 6/05

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