AquaBrowser Searching Tips

Refining a Search with AND, OR, NOT

In AquaBrowser you can refine a search using AND, OR, and NOT.

AND is the default. A space between search terms is regarded as an AND. A search for geisha memoirs looks for geisha AND memoirs in the same cataloging record.
OR can be used to look for either term, or both, as in geisha OR memoirs.
The hyphen ( - ) can be used to exclude a keyword. A search for geisha -memoirs looks for records containing geisha, excluding those that contain memoirs.

Defining Searches

Rather than having AquaBrowser search all fields in the record, you can specify which you wish to search by preceding your term with a field name. This will narrow your search results considerably.

author	All main and additional author fields
callno	Call number
format	Format ( see details below)
id	Bib number
isbn	ISBN
language	Language spelled out, e.g. chinese
location	Location code - cen,eco, elk,gle, hdc,mil, sav
notes	All notes fields (summary, edition, contents)
subject	All subject fields
title	All main, series, and additional title fields
year	Year of publication

Using a Wildcard

The asterisk (*) is a wildcard, used to truncate a term.

id:* lists all titles in the collection.

unit* lists titles with a word anywhere in the record that starts with unit.

subject:unit* lists titles with a word in a subject field that starts with unit (United, Unitas, unit, unity, Unitarian).

Searching by Format

The format can be entered by itself, as in format:children (for a list of all juvenile materials in the collection) or with other keywords, as in dogs format:children (for juvenile materials with dogs somewhere in the record).

Here is a full list of formats. Note that single format names do not need quotation marks.

format:"audiobook on cassette"

format:"audiobook on cd"

format:book

format:children

format:"downloadable audiobook"

format:dvd

format:"electronic book"

format:"graphic novels"

format:"large print"

format:"music on cd"

format:"periodical*newspaper"

format:toy

format:videocassette

format:website

format:"young adult"

Format can also be used to narrow a search, as in fiction talking books -format:children. The-format:children phrase excludes juvenile materials when displaying search results.

Searching Multiple Terms

To search for a specific author, precede the name with author: and use quotation marks, as in author:"lisa jackson" or author:"jackson lisa". The order of the terms is immaterial. Searching without author: and quotes gives results for lisa or jackson used anywhere in the record.

It's possible to search multiple authors at once (separated by or) by typing author:"james patterson" or author:"lilian braun" or author:"alice sebold".

You can also use the symbol to exclude a term. For example, a search for mexico includes titles on Mexico and New Mexico. To exclude New Mexico, type mexico -new.