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“Brandeis

FA 80A: Modern Architecture

Course Guide created by Lisa Zeidenberg, Academic Outreach Librarian for Creative Arts

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 Library Catalog from the drop-down menu options 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 the Library Catalog 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 the Library Catalog by keyword, and use the Subjects listed in the left margin to find related materials.

Search Tips

  • Remember to enclose search phrases in quotes:

"empire state building"

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

"empire state building"

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

records that include the word empire and the word state and the word building but not the phrase "empire state building"

Doing this will help you avoid sifting through irrelevant results.

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

architect* will search for

architect, architects, and architecture

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.

  • If you want to broaden a search, you can revise it by including your original term with a related term in an "or" search:

ex. "modern movement" or "international style"

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

If It's Not at the Library