Keywords are the default search field. This is the search field that is automatically used when using the simple search and are useful when trying to broadly search a word or a phrase as it appears in any material.

The subject search field finds the word or phrase in the metadata (the behind the scenes of the material) under the subject category. This is useful if your search is generating too many irrelevant results. Searching by subject limits your search, but ensures that the results will be relevant to the topic.

Searching by title is a great way to quickly find the exact resource you need, assuming you know the title of the material, but it is also a risky way of doing so because if you put a word in that does not belong, the search could fail. Besides, performing a simple search will just as likely give you the title you want right away.

The title search could also be used to narrow results and ensure relevance. For example, searching "arson" as a keyword and "dog" as a title, the results will prioritize materials about arson that have "dog" in the title. This ensures that the material not only mentions dogs once, but is a material specifically about dogs. However, as a disclaimer, simple search functions are typically smart enough to automatically prioritize resources with the keywords in the title, or those that use the keywords frequently.

Searching by author is perfect if you do not have the title but know the author's name, or if you like a particular author's work and want to see more materials by that author. Just be sure that the author's name is spelled exactly right, or else the search may fail.

Let's start with AND.

AND is the most basic of the three. Imagining a Venn diagram with one circle as our search term "arson" and the other circle as our search term "dog," AND would represent the small section in the middle. The results would prioritize materials with both "arson" and "dog" as keywords. In other words, materials just about arson or just about dogs will be moved far down the list or more likely excluded entirely.

OR is a commonly used Boolean search term, and a good reason why you would use the advanced search instead of a basic search. However, it is a little more confusing than AND to use.

While searching "arson" AND "dog" will generate good results, it will not reveal all the materials about the subject. There will be no results about canines and arson, which is clearly still relevant. This is where OR comes in. By using the term OR, you tell the catalog that you want to include another term. Let's add it to our arson dog search string. By searching "arson" AND "dog" OR "canine," your results would include materials about arson that include either dog or canine as keywords. Imagining our Venn diagram again, OR would represent the entire diagram, because it gathers everything that includes both search terms, "arson" and "dog."

It is important not to search "dog" AND "canine," or else your results will prioritize materials that include both and will probably exclude any that only have one or the other.

NOT is probably the least commonly used, but can be really helpful at times.

Imagine we are searching for materials on arson dogs but the results are saturated with materials about the use of arson dogs as evidence in court cases and all of the results you see have the term "court" in the title, but you are not interested in these resources. In our search string, we can input "arson" AND "dogs" NOT "court" to eliminate results that include "court" as a keyword.