New Catalog Tips

Have you tried the new catalog search yet?

Here are two quick tips: one for successful searching and one for individual preferences.

AND
When you type a few words into the keywords search box, the system assumes an "AND" between each word. So a search for "rodgers environmental" is interpreted as "rodgers AND environmental."

That is great, unless you need to use synonyms because you may not be sure of which word appears in a title or subject heading.

Say you are looking for material on Washington State laws concerning children. Do you use child, children, infants, or minors in the search? You can use all of those terms; just type the word OR between them.

Please, May I Have Some More?
I am frustrated by only seeing ten results after I run a search. Many other databases give me the option of asking for a greater number of results, why not the catalog?

Well, you do have the option of seeing more results, but the option isn't where most of us expect to find it, on the first page of our list of results.

Instead, click on the link to Your Library Account--you'll see this on the top right hand side of the screen. If you signed in with your UW Net ID before the search runs, you will get into the Account information automatically. (If you didn't sign in individually, you will need to so now.).

On the right side of the page you will see Display Settings.

Here you can adjust the number of results per page that you will see whenever you login at the beginning of a catalog search setting. The default option is 10; you can also choose 20 or 30 items.