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Library Catalogue search tips

The Library Catalogue is available at https://www.lib.bris.ac.uk/ALEPH/ (or via Quick search on the Library homepage)

Basic search tips

The following basic search techniques can be used in the Basic Search and the Advanced Search (unless noted below). The catalogue does not include details of all the individual articles in the journals we hold or chapters in the books. See below for advice on locating a particular journal article or book chapter, and the section below for literature searching tips.

Searching for a particular book?

  • Try 'Find in all fields' with the author's last name and a significant title word, eg orwell farm.
  • If you are trying to locate a book chapter reference try this approach and search for the title of the whole book and/or the author/editor of the whole book.
  • If you only know the title try 'Title contains word(s)' and enter a few title words - entering a full long title is usually unnecessary.
  • Further advice on using our book collections and eBooks can be found on our books collection page.

Searching for books on a particular subject?

  • Try 'Find in all fields' with one or more keywords, eg history china or history chin? or "chinese history".
  • If you change the 'Field to search' to 'Title contains' or 'Subject contains' you may find better results.
  • 'Basic search' only: Alternatively, if you know the classmark of a useful book on the subject you could use the 'Classmark' or 'Shelflist' options.
  • If you are finding lots of theses or undergraduate reports which you are not interested in, you could try 'Find in all fields' and specify not thesis and not undergraduate, eg "thin films" not thesis not undergraduate.
  • If you are looking for an eBook on a particular subject you can use any of these approaches together with selecting 'eBooks' from the 'Material Type' drop-down list.  Please note that many more eBooks are available in packages listed in the Material type - eBooks category on MetaLib.

Searching for books by a particular author?

  • Try 'Author contains' with full parts of the name (initials will not work), eg stephen hawking.
  • 'Basic search' only: If you have the last name and initial only use 'Author (person - last name first) begins with' instead and enter hawking s.

Trying to locate an individual journal article?

To locate an individual journal article you should search for the title of the journal (not the title of the article):

  • 'Basic search' only: Try 'Journal title contains' with keywords from the title, eg internat? econ?
  • 'Basic search' only: Alternatively, use 'Journal title or book series begins' and enter the start of the journal title in full, eg international journal of economic.
  • Another approach is to use 'Title contains', change the material type to 'Printed journals' and use keywords from the journal title (this should have the same result as option 1).
  • If we do not have the printed journal, remember to search the eJournals catalogue to check whether we have access to the title as an electronic journal. You can link to the  eJournals catalogue by using the eJournals link in the footer of the catalogue.
  • Further advice on using journals can be found in our journals collection page.

Trying to find other library materials, such as an eBook, a University of Bristol thesis, or DVD?

  • To restrict your search to eBooks (electronic books), change the material type to 'eBooks'. Please note that many more eBooks are available in packages listed in the Material type - eBooks category on MetaLib.
  • To restrict your search to University of Bristol theses, change the material type to 'UoB theses'.
  • To restrict your search to visual materials, including DVDs, videocassettes, and pictures (not maps) change the material type to 'Visual materials'.
  • Further advice on searching for other library materials can be found in our collections pages.

Trying to search the literature?

  • Searching the Library Catalogue is not equivalent to searching the literature of a subject. Advice can be found on the Search tips page.
Please note:

  • You may use a ? character or * (asterisk) to search for records that contain parts of a word: eg chin? (for china, chinese, chin, etc) or anim* (for animal, animate, animals, etc).
  • You can search for a phrase by enclosing the words in inverted commas, eg "global warming"
  • The system is not case sensitive, so you can enter lower or upper case letters for the same result
  • On order items are not found using certain search types. Use one of the 'Basic Search' 'contains' type searches or Advanced Search to find on order items. On order items cannot be found by using other fields to search in 'Basic Search'.

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Advanced search tips

The following advanced search techniques can be used in the 'Find in all fields' and 'contains' options of Basic Search, and Advanced search.

Within a search box you can use Boolean operators for more search flexibility:

AND will narrow a search by retrieving all the terms present: e.g. Bristol and Brunel
OR will broaden a search by retrieving any of the terms present: e.g. teenagers or adolescents
NOT will narrow a search by excluding a term: e.g. dance not ballet

The ? character or * (asterisk) may be placed at the beginning, end or middle of a part of a term (but may only be used once in any term):

e.g. *national to retrieve international, national etc
nation* to retrieve national, nation etc
The ! symbol can be used to replace a single character:
e.g. wom!n will find both woman and women
The # character will find variant spellings where one version of the word has an additional character to another version:
e.g. colo#r will find both colour and color
The % symbol, followed by a number placed between two words indicates that the words should appear within a particular distance from each other, but may be in any order:
e.g. england %3 ballads will find 'Ballads of Old England' and 'England and her Ballads'
The ! character, followed by a number placed between two words indicates that the words should appear within a particular distance from each other, and in the order you typed them:
e.g. ballads !3 england will find 'Ballads of Old England' but not 'England and her Ballads'
The system is not case sensitive, so you can enter lower or upper case letters for the same result.

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Literature searching tips

The catalogue does not include details of all the individual articles in the journals we hold or chapters in the books. Consequently, searching the Library Catalogue is not equivalent to searching the literature of a subject. To search the literature to find journal article references, etc, you  will probably need to use one of the databases available via MetaLib, our resource gateway (easily accessed via the Quick search > Articles & databases option of the Library home page). Then use the Library Catalogue and our eJournals catalogue to locate these reference in print or electronic form, or use our Get it! buttons (if they are available on the database) to help you do this.

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Field codes

These 3 letter codes are used in the Revise this search option at the bottom of the Results list page (the corresponding term in the brackets is displayed  on the 'Previous searches' page and those marked * at the top of the 'Results list').  You can tweek your search terms, change the field code, or add extra elements to your search as indicated in these examples. If you have more than one element you must use and, or, or not between them. Adding 'and WSL=06' would limit the search to items in the Education Library for instance.

Examples:

  • WRD = ( elastic ) and WSL = ( 64 )
  • WRD=polymeric and WSL=60
  • WSU = ( homeric )
  • Default is 'find in all fields', so entering 'global' equates to  WRD = ( global )

The Field codes in use are:

  • WRD (Words*) = Find in all fields
  • WTI  (W-titles*) = Title contains word(s)
  • TIT (TIT) = Title begins with
  • WAU (W-authors*) = Author contains word(s)
  • AUT (AUT) = Author (person - last name first) begins with
  • COR (COR) = Author (organisation) begins with
  • WSU (W-subjects*) = Subject contains word(s)
  • WJO (W-Journal keyword*) = Journal title contains word(s)
  • SRS (SRS )= Journal title or book series begins with
  • LOC (LOC) = Library of Congress classmarks (used in the Arts & Social Science, Education, Queens, Wills and Veterinary Sciences libraries).
  • SHL (SHL) = Shelflist (all library classmark schemes in one list)
  • WLN (W-Language*), eg  WLN=FRE or WLN = ( FRE )
    Possible options:
    • ENG (English)
    • FRE (French)
    • GER(German)
    • ITA (Italian)
    • POR (Portuguese)
    • RUS (Russian)
    • SPA (Spanish)
    • GRC (Classical Greek)
    • LAT (Latin)
  • WSL (W-Sublibrary*), eg WSL=00 or WSL = (00)
    Possible options:
    • 00 (Arts & Social Sciences Library)
    • 68 (Biological Sciences Library)
    • 64 (Chemistry Library)
    • 06 (Education Library)
    • 26 (Geography Library)
    • 80 (Medical Library)
    • 60 (Physics Library)
    • 40 (Queens's Building Library)
    • 84 (Social Medicine Library)
    • 90 (Store)
    • 97 (Theatre Collection)
    • 86 (Veterinary Sciences Library)
    • 04 (Wills Memorial Library)
  • WCL (W-Collection*), eg WCL=WTC or WCL = (WTC)
    Possible options:
    • DESK (Library Desk) {used by Chemistry and Physics Libraries}
    • MEFC (Modern European Film Collection)
    • OLC (Open Learning Centre)
    • REP (Reports) {used by Queens Library}
    • STORE (CE Store)  {ex- Continuing Education Library stock - now held in Store}
    • WTC (Women's Theatre Collection) {used by the Theatre Collection}

 

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