Searching Orbis, the Yale University Catalog

Search limits help make most searches more specific (see Restrictions and Cautions). Two types of search limits are available in Orbis. Quick Limits, which are found in a menu within the Simple Search box, are used to apply a single, commonly-used limit to your current search. For example, you can limit your search to just books (thereby excluding journals, videorecordings, etc. from your search results) or to materials published within the last ten years.

More Limits offers several further options for limiting searches. Using this option you can limit your search by:

Language of the material
Collection within the Yale University Library system
Date [of publication] of the material
Medium (e.g. video, electronic resource, microform, sound recording)
Item Type (e.g. book, serial, music score, printed map)

Setting Search Limits Before You Search

From the Simple Search or Advanced Search screen, select the button. The Search Limits screen appears. Select desired limits. Then click on the Set Limits button at the top or bottom of the screen to return to your search screen. Remember to choose your limits BEFORE you enter your search terms.

To combine a Quick Limit with selections from More Limits, go to More Limits first and make your choices there, then go back to the search box and choose a Quick Limit before searching.

Setting Search Limits After You Search

From a list of titles, select the Post Limit button. The Search Limits screen appears. Select desired limits. Then click on the Search Limits button at the top or bottom of the screen to return to your title list with limits in effect.

The following message appears on all search screens once limits have been activated:

When using Search History to repeat previous searches, the search limits in effect are only the current ones. To restore previous search limits, use the Clear Limits button to clear the current limits, reset the previous limits, then select the Set Limits button. Return to the Search History screen and repeat the search.

Restrictions and Cautions

The Set Limits button on the Simple Search or Advanced Search screen can be selected for any search, but the chosen limits have NO EFFECT on Subject Heading, Author (sorted by name), Author (sorted by title), Uniform Title as Main Entry, or Call Number searches.

Search Limits

They are effective only for Title and Keyword searches. However, the Post Limit button can be used to apply limits to any resulting Title List.

Once search limits are set, they remain in effect for all subsequent searches, until the Clear Limits button is selected. This includes searches that are launched by selecting a name or subject heading from a single catalog record, in order to find related records.

Search limits can be very useful for refining search results in Orbis, but they should be used with caution. Information used for each of the limits categories is not always recorded in all catalog records. If relevant material is not retrieved after setting limits, clear the limits and repeat the search.

Types of Limits

Date - Language - Medium - Location

Date

Confines search results to materials published in a single year or span of years.
The "after the year" (greater-than sign >), "before the year" (less-than sign <), and “range" options can be particularly useful when searching for materials whose date of publication is uncertain or consists of a span of years, since limits by a single date would not retrieve such materials.

Example #1: A book whose publication date was recorded as "[19--]" (i.e., uncertain decade) will not be retrieved when limiting by a single date; it will be retrieved with any one of the following date limits: range of 1900 to 1960; range of 1880 to 1940; or > 1860.

Example #2: A journal whose publication dates span the years 1893-1912 will not be retrieved when limiting by a single year within that span, e.g., 1910. It will be retrieved when selecting a range of years or a "before" or "after" date that encompasses the whole span of years cited for the material, such as one of the following: range of 1890 to 1920; > 1900; or < 1920.

Reprint publications will only be retrieved by setting the search limit to the date of the reprint, not the original date of publication.
Some materials will not be retrieved at all when date limits are set because no data was recorded in the encoded fields used for date limiting.

Using Date limits:

Type a year in the initial box (shown as 1982 in the example below)

Select the appropriate button for the type of limit (see examples)
Select the equal sign, for materials published in 1997:

Select the greater-than sign for materials published after (not including) 1980:

Select the less-than sign for materials published before (not including) 1905:

Select Range, for materials published between 1860 and 1910:

Language, Medium, or Location limits:

Language

Confines search results to materials in a particular language or set of languages. Since only one language can be recorded in the data field the limit uses, this limit reflects the primary or predominant language of the material. For example, a work in Japanese with some English translation will not be found when limiting on works in English.
English is listed first; after which comes a short list of the languages most strongly represented in Yale’s collections, then an alphabetical list of other languages.

Medium

Confines search results to the particular technology used to record the material. Examples are videorecordings, sound recordings, and microforms (i.e. microfiche or microfilm).
The media listed are the most common which are encoded in catalog records

Collection

Confines search results to collections in Sterling Memorial Library, or one of Yale’s other libraries or special collections. Since several Yale locations specialize in a particular subject or type of material or a particular region of the world, this limit can be useful for confining search results to collection locations where research will be concentrated.

Collection Limits

Using Language, Collection, Date, Medium, or Item Type Limits

Select a limits category by highlighting any option within that category's window with a mouse click:

Move to the option you desire by clicking on the scrolling arrows. Then highlight your choice with the mouse. You can also move to an option by typing its first letter (Example: Type "g" to move to German). Keep typing the first letter until the desired option is highlighted. (You will have to type "g" several times to find German.)
To choose multiple options within a category, scroll to each additional selection and hold down the <Ctrl> key (or <Apple> key on the Macintosh) while highlighting it with the mouse.

Example: In the Language category, hold down the <Ctrl> or <Apple> key to select both English and French. To deselect a choice (i.e. remove the highlighting), select it again while holding down the <Ctrl> key.

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