Basic Searching in WorldCat
- Best used when you want to search on a single name, title, or concept
- Keyword word or phrase
- Enclose a phrase in quotation marks: “prison reform”
- Two words with a space between them and no quotation marks will be
searched as if an AND were between them:
- prison reform will be searched as prison AND reform
- Keyword will search the title, subject headings, and contents fields of the record
- Author searching
- Enclose last and first name (in that order) in quotation marks: “King Stephen”
- Typing Stephen King or King, Stephen without quotation marks will search stephen AND king
- Title searching
- Enclose a phrase in quotation marks: “bilingual education”
- Titles not enclosed in quotation marks are stripped of stopwords and
the remaining words are searched as keywords
- Gone with the wind is searched as gone AND wind
- Subject searching
- To search with Library of Congress subject headings, select Subjects from the upper right area of the screen, and enter your term
- This will identify broader and narrower terms, as well as your exact term, and will also identify potential ways to subdivide your subject
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