WorldCat Local: advanced searching techniques

Keyword search

Keyword search is the default search in WorldCat Local. It searches for individual words contained anywhere in the item's record. Keywords can be names of people, places, publishers, titles, subjects … anything. The words can be entered in any order

Phrase Search

Example of phrase search Use full quotations marks to search by phrase. WorldCat Local will find all records that have your exact words as enclosed within the quotes. This works really well for finding a book if you know the exact title, such as "The Da Vinci Code", or a topic such as "social gospel".

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators (and, or and not) allow you to group, include, or exclude keywords in your search. WorldCat Local has special symbols for these operators.

Symbol	Explanation	Example
Plus sign +	The plus sign means “and”. It will retrieve items that have all of your search terms in its record. You don’t need to use + because it is automatically implied in your searches.	These two searches will find all records that have both keywords.
OR (uppercase only) \| symbol	The use of OR, or the \| symbol, will search for either of the words listed in the search box.	These searches will find records that have either the word cats or the word dogs.
Minus sign -	The minus sign will exclude terms from your search. This is used like NOT in other databases	This search finds records that have the word cats but not the word dogs.
parentheses ( )	You can use parentheses to create more precise searches.	Finds records that have the words dogs walking OR dogs grooming.

Wildcards

In a card games a wildcard is a card that represents any other card. Similarly, wildcards in databases are special characters used to represent any other characters. They are useful when you are unsure of spelling, when there are alternate spellings, or when you only know part of a term. You can use the following three wildcards

To find …	Use	Explanation	Example
A single character	#	The pound sign, also called a number sign or hash mark, represents a single character.	A search for wom#n will find woman and women.
One or more characters	? ?2 and so on.	The question mark (?) represents any number of additional characters. Include a number if you know the maximum number of characters the wildcard will replace.	Lab?rs will find labors, labours, Labradors, and so on. Lab?2rs will find labors and labours
Characters at the end of a keyword	* ? works too	The asterix ( * ) allows you to search for a term and its variations by entering a minimum of the first three letters of the term followed by an asterisk (*) or a question mark.	Securit* Finds security, securities, securitization, and so on.

To find …

Use

Explanation

Example

A single character

The pound sign, also called a number sign or hash mark, represents a single character.

A search for wom#n will find woman and women.

One or more characters

?
?2
and so on.

The question mark (?) represents any number of additional characters. Include a number if you know the maximum number of characters the wildcard will replace.

Lab?rs will find labors, labours, Labradors, and so on.

Lab?2rs will find labors and labours

Characters at the end of a keyword

*
? works too

The asterix ( * ) allows you to search for a term and its variations by entering a minimum of the first three letters of the term followed by an asterisk (*) or a question mark.

Securit* Finds security,
securities, securitization, and so on.

Relevancy (Sorting)

Illustration of the Sort By options.

By default WorldCat Local sorts your search results by relevance and library. This means AST's materials appear first. But what does "relevance" mean?

Think of relevance as a score. The higher the score, the higher an item appears in the search results.

If your keywords appear in the title, author or subject field, this will add a lot to their score.
The proximity of your keywords in a record will affect the score. That is if the keywords occur close together in a record, then this will add a lot to their score.
How recent an item was published and how widely it is held also affect the score.