FA 171B Buddhist World Art

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 (the default) 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 find related materials.

Use the following terms (choose Subject from the Advanced Search options) in the OneSearch Library Catalog tab:

Buddhism
Buddhist art
Buddhism and art
Buddhist art and symbolism
 

• Remember to enclose search phrases in quotes:

"decorative arts"

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

"decorative arts"

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

records that include the word "decorative" and the word "arts" but not the phrase "decorative arts"

Doing this will help you avoid sifting through irrelevant results.

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

buddhis* will search for

buddhism, buddhist, and buddhists

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.

• You can expand your search by connecting related terms in an "or" search string:

ex. japan or china or asia 

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