Keyword Searching

When searching by Keyword, enter a word or words from the author, title, series title, subject, organization, conference name, contents, summary or a line in a poem or song.

Search Tips	Examples	Description
Exact phrase	“world wide web” “aboriginal art”	Multiple words are searched together as one phrase
Search/Boolean operators	(western australia or queensland) and (state library or public library) and not catalogue	AND - find all words present OR - find any words present AND NOT - exclude this word ( ) - group words together
Truncation	inter* (finds internet but not international) col*r (finds color and colour) dost** (finds dostoyevsky)	Single asterisk allows up to 5 characters in the middle or end of a word Double asterisk allows unlimited characters at the end of a word
Wildcards	organi?ation (finds organization and organisation)	? matches any single character in the specified position in the word
Proximity	noise near pollution battye within 5 west australia	Near finds in the same field within 10 words of each other in any order Within # finds words in the same field within # words of each other in any order
Field Limits	t: prisoner and a:rowling finds Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K.Rowling	Specify fields to search t:title a:author s:subject n:note
Punctuation	Red & green Red | green Red ! green Red ~ green Brown’s	& is equivalent to AND | is equivalent to OR ! is equivalent to NOT ~ is equivalent to NEAR apostrophe is ignored remaining punctuation is converted to a space
Case	Flowers FLOWERS flowers	Words can be entered in uppercase, lower case or mixed case

Relevancy Ranking of Keyword Search Results

	Examples	Description
Most Relevant	The title, "Climate change and world agriculture" is considered among the Most Relevant because the phrase “climate change” appears in the main title.	The search phrase appears in the main title
Highly Relevant	The title, "Greenhouse : planning for climate change and other key issues” is considered Highly Relevant because the phrase "climate change" appears in the subtitle.	The search phrase appears in the sub-title or other title information
Very Relevant	The title, "Carbon footprint : what it is, why it is important, how you can lower it" is considered Very Relevant because the term "climate change" appears in the summary.	The search phrase is in the contents, series notes, or subject headings
Relevant	The title, "World weather, climate & climatic change” is considered Relevant because the terms "change" and "climate" appear in the title/subtitle, although not as an adjacent phrase	The Boolean AND pulls words from the search phrase in the main title and/or sub-title
Other Relevant	The title, "Fight global warming now : the handbook for taking action in your community " is considered an Other Relevant title because the term "climate" appears in the subject and the term "change" appears in the summary.	The Boolean AND pulls the words from the search phrase from anywhere in the recordN

 

Other points to consider when entering your search:

To repeat a Keyword search you had conducted earlier without having to re-enter your search:

• Select the ‘down arrow’ appearing to the right of the ‘Search History’ box that appears at the top of the search results screen; then
• Select the search you wish to repeat and the results of the search will automatically display.
• Select the 'modify search' button.

What to do if your search was unsuccessful

• Check the words which display in the search box at the top of the search results screen to ensure that no “typos” or spelling mistakes were made when the search was entered. If this has occurred, simply correct the words which display in the search box and then select the ‘Search’ button which displays to it’s right.
• Select the 'modify search' button.

More tips on searching are available here