contains information about the items (books, CDs, DVDs, government reports, etc.) that the library owns (or has electronic access to) and
tells you where to find them (physically or virtually).
You can search for known or unknown items in a library catalog. That is, you can find a particular item--for example, a certain book or movie whose title or author you know--OR items that meet certain criteria (on a certain topic, in a certain language, are a certain format, etc.).
This is helpul in finding items by composers or prolific writers, because the titles are listed alphabetically after the author.
Terms must be in exact order to be retrieved in an author (last name, first name), title, or subject search (unless you are in the advanced search):
Examples:
an exact title match, such as girl with the dragon tatoo
an exact author match [last name, first name], such as Larsson, Stieg
an exact subject match, such as Missing persons--Fiction
Each item in the database is represented by a bibliographic record, which contains descriptive information about:
What the item is--author, title, publisher, physical description (number of pages, illustrations, bibliographies)
What the item isabout(subject headings, table of contents, summary notes)
Availability. Tells you whether the item is currently available and how to access the information: where it is available physically (which library, where in the library, by call number) or virtually (URL).
You can do general keyword searching (words in any fields,including summary and table of contents fields).
Put quotes around any words you want to keep together as a phrase, in that exact order. This can help if you get too many results.
You can do keyword searching in specific fields (words in any orderin title, author, or subject fields)
Again, use quotes if you want the search to return the words in the exact order you enter them.