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AAAS/FA-75B : History of African American Art

Course guide created by Lisa Zeidenberg, Creative Arts Librarian and Laura Hibbler, Associate University Librarian for Research & Instruction

Boolean logic

OneSearch

Finding Books, Journals, and Videos: Searching the Library Catalog

Use Brandeis Library OneSearch to search the online catalog of the Brandeis Library. Choose the Library Catalog option to search for books, journals, and videos in the library collections.

  • If you have already identified the book(s) you need, you can use the Advanced Search to search by Title or by Author to locate the item(s) in the library.

  • If you are trying to identify books that will be useful for your research, search by keyword, and use the Subjects listed in the left margin to identify relevant materials. Clicking on the subject headings listed under individual item records will expand your results to the entire catalog. 

Search tips

  • Remember to enclose search phrases in quotes:

"african american"

This ensures that the database will return results that include the entire phrase

"african american"

rather than records that contain both of these words, but not your search phrase:

records that include the word African and the word American but not the phrase "African American"

Doing this will help you avoid sifting through irrelevant results.

  • To search for more than one variant of a term, use truncation:

photograph* will search for 

photograph, photographs, photographer, photographers, and photography

The database searches for any word that begins with the letters that precede the truncation symbol (in this case, an asterisk). Some databases use other symbols, such as a question mark, for truncation.

  • Note obsolete terminology -- such terms may be useful when searching for primary resources. For example, the Harlem Renaissance used to be referred to as the New Negro Movement, so you're more likely to encounter the latter term in historical materials.
  • You can also expand your search by including a related term in an "or" search with your first term:

ex. "henry tanner" OR "henry ossawa tanner" OR "henry o. tanner" 

See the box on Boolean Logic for more about this search technique.​

If it's not at the library