How to search our Web2 catalogue

This page details how to quickly and successfully search the previous library catalogue.

How to search by keyword

All searches on the main catalogue search page are keyword searches.

A keyword search will look for the words you type in any part of the item record in the catalogue — notes, publisher, author(s), subject(s) and title.

To search for an item, type in the word or words you are looking for and click the relevant button.

For example, try the following searches:

• elephants to search for item records that have elephants located somewhere in the record
• Australian animals to search for item records that have both Australian and animals located somewhere in the record

Searching by author, title or subject

A general keyword search may retrieve too many items — you can narrow your search by using an author, title or subject search.

These searches will look for your keywords in selected parts of the item record only.

If you are specifically looking for an author, you would click the author button, a title you would click the title button, and so on.

• Type grisham and click 'Author' to search for titles by John Grisham
• Type elephants and click 'Title' to search for records that have the word elephants in their title
• Type elephants and click 'Subject' to search for records that have the word elephants in its subjects

More help with searching

• Refine your search: You can improve your search even further by limiting material types, using wildcards, using AND, OR and NOT and searching for a phrase.
• Search tips: general tips for searching.

• Borrowing items: once you've found it in the catalogue, here's how to find it on the shelf or place a hold on it, borrow it, return it and what we do about overdue items.