When to use advanced search

Use advanced search when you need to:

• combine two or more specific fields
• search by publisher or place of publication
• combine two or more values of a limit
  • items in either the Music Library or Archive of Recorded Sound
  • Journals and Newspapers published in Spain
• do complex Boolean logic

In many cases, a simple search will be effective to find a title + author:

• All fields: history man bradbury

The correct item will typically be in the first 2-3 results.

Example

Find everything by or about Picasso in the Art Library.

• Match ANY
  • Title: picasso
  • Author: picasso
  • Subject: picasso
• Limit to Library: Art & Architecture

The results will not include ~300 works that mention Picasso in a content note or review, or other minor mention. These additional items would be retrieved in a simple search, but would be ranked at the end of the results.

Boolean

You can create complex Boolean logic using AND, OR, and NOT (all in upper-case) and parentheses for nesting.

What is searched in each field

• All fields
  • All metadata, except call numbers
• Title
  • main title
  • uniform title
  • title variant (including former title)
  • related title
  • series title (also searchable in a separate field)
• Author
  • main author
  • contributors (co-authors, advisors, illustrators, etc.)
  • series author
• Subject
  • database topic (domain headings assigned only to databases)
  • subject headings, including topic, region, era, and genre
  • topic keywords from SDR-deposited items
• Series
  • series title
• Place, publisher, year
  • country of publication (e.g. Spain)
  • location (e.g. Valencia)
  • publisher
  • publication date (single year; does not allow date ranges)
• ISBN/ISSN
  • isbn
  • issn
  • oclc
  • barcode
  • call number
    • in advanced search, call number must be searched in quotation marks, e.g. "JQ1879 .A15 D385"

Limits (aka facets) are terms from the metadata of the items in your search results, grouped and counted. Because limits depend on the presence and consistency of the metadata, they sometimes are not a complete representation of the results. 

If your result set is very large, review the limits to see what Resource types, Authors, or Topics are represented. Select appropriate limits to view only the most relevant results.

Before you search

Select limits before you search if you are certain of the category.

• If you want only images, select Resource type: Image. 
• If you want only materials that you can read online, select Access: Online.

If you don't see the results you expected, try removing the limits you've selected. The libraries may have what you want in a different form or location.

After you search

to disambiguate an author's name

A search for author John Barton finds over 200 results by several authors with that name. The author limit distinguishes among the individuals by full name or birth/death dates, allowing you to find the one you want:

• Barton, John H. (52)
• Barton, John, 1948- (23)
• Barton, John J. (12)
• Barton, John, 1957- (10)
• Barton, John (7)
• Barton, John, 1928- (7)
• Barton, John M. T. (John Mackintosh Tilney), 1898- (3)
• Barton, John, master of the free school of Kinfare (3)
• Bartone, John C. (John Charles), 1921- (3)

to search for Java as a geographic location

A search for the subject Java finds over 2,000 results, most of them about the computer programming language. Use the Region limit to focus on the geographic Java:

• Indonesia (425)
• Java (Indonesia) (273)
• Java Sea (Indonesia) (41)
• Netherlands (24)
• Java (20)
• Borneo (14)
• Java Sea (11)
• Sri Lanka (11)
• Indian Ocean (10)

Limit definitions

Access

Is the item available online, or physically at the library? (Many items are both.)

Resource type

The type of content - for example, text, music.

Media type

The physical or encoding format of media.

Date

A histogram shows the distribution of your results by year, decade, or century, depending on the size of the range.

To narrow the date range of your results, use the slider, or enter a start and end year, and click Apply.

Library

Search only the holdings of a specific library. (But caution: no individual library contains all of Stanford's materials on a given topic.) 

Language

Select results created in or translated to a specific language.

Author

Authors/creators of, and contributors to, works in your results. 

Topic

The topic covered by works in your results.

Genre

The category or style of works in your results.

Call number

Shows how your results are distributed across major disciplines. SUL uses several classification systems: Library of Congress (LC) for most materials; Dewey for some historical holdings; and various government document classifications.

Region

The geographic region covered by works in your results.

Era

The historical period covered by works in your results.

Organization (as author)

Corporate or government entities that are identified as author or are otherwise responsible for content.

Phrase

Use quotation marks "..." to search for a specific phrase. Word-stemming will still occur within the phrase.

SearchWorks finds results that include all the words in the order given, as well as results that may have a word inserted between two words in your phrase. For example:

• "french beans food scares" would match a record containing
• "french beans make food scares" but would not match
• "french beans can make food scares"

Title, Series, Subject

To search a specific type of metadata, select it from the All fields dropdown. 

Author

Select Author from the All fields dropdown. 

Searching by "Last name, First name" is most effective.

• "Barton, John" (in quotation marks) will find more accurate results than John Barton without quotation marks.

Use truncation to search for a name with only a first initial.

• Kieślowski, K* will find Kieślowski, K. and Kieślowski, Krzysztof - but the asterisk cannot be combined with quotation marks, so the results will be less specific.

Call number

Select Call number from the All fields dropdown. 

Search from the left:

• MSS CODEX M0379 CB, not just CODEX M0379

Truncate from the right, if your search doesn't return any records:

• KF5402 .D38 1994 can be shortened to KF5402 .D38 or even KF5402

Spacing and punctuation are ignored:

• KF5402 .D32 is the same as KF5402D32

Select

Save relevant items during your search session to email, export, etc.

1. Check the Select checkbox associated with an item to add it to your list.
2. The Selections option in the top menu bar shows the total number of items you have selected. When you click Selections, you'll see the 3 most recent items added to the list.
3. To see all your selected items, select Show list in the Selections dropdown.

On your Selections list, actions affect only the items on the current page. If you have more than 20 selections, you can set the "per page" option to a higher number, so that you can export more items at one time.

Cite

On an item page, or on your Selections list, click Cite.

SearchWorks will display the ALA, MLA, and Chicago citation formats for the item(s), for you to copy and paste to a document.

Text

On an item page:

1. Click Send to...
2. Select Text.
3. Enter a phone number, and select the carrier.
4. Click Send.

The text includes the title and link to the item page. 

Selection lists cannot be shared via text, because of the character limitation of the text message.

Email

On an item page, or on your Selections list:

1. Click Send to...
2. Select Email.
3. Enter an email address and (optional) message.
   (Note: you cannot send email to more than one address at a time.)
4. Click Send.

The "from" address of the email is "no-reply@searchworks.stanford.edu"

Export to bibliography management tools

You can send items to RefWorks or EndNote from SearchWorks. On an item page, or on your Selections list:

1. Click Send to...
2. Select the tool you want.
3. You will be directed to login to your account on the service website.

Print

On an item page, or on your Selections list:

1. Click Send to...
2. Select Printer.

Your brower's printer dialog will open. 

The print formats for search results vary by the currently-selected view (Normal, Gallery, Brief).

When you find an item that is relevant to your search, you can use it to find related items in several ways.

Browse related items

If the item has a Library of Congress (LC) or Dewey Classification call number, there will be a Browse related items section at the bottom of the record page. This is a virtual shelf view that shows items with call numbers on either side of the one you selected, across all the Stanford libraries. 

Some items have more than one call number (e.g. LC at one library, Dewey at another). You can select the call number to use as a starting point for your browse.

Subject links

Hierarchical subject links allow you to find more items on the same topic, or expand your search to a broader subject area. An item with this subject heading:

• African American women > Southern States > History > 19th century.

...also links to searches for: 

• African American women > Southern States > History
• African American women > Southern States
• African American women

Just click on the section of the heading that you want to search.

Uniform titles

Items with common titles (such as "Poems") or works that occur in many languages (such as Stravinsky's "Firebird") are typically cataloged with a uniform title that provides a way to bring them together.

For example, this simple search:  

donne poems

retrieves 259 items. The first item includes a linked title ("Poems") below the main title. 

Click that link to do a much more specific search for "Donne, John, 1572-1631. Poems."