OHSU

Catalog Searching Tips

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EXAMPLES
AUTHOR SEARCHING
AUTHOR
  • Type last name first.
  • If you know the first name type that or the initial in as well.
  • You may also type the name of an organization or governmental body.
  • If you type the name in directly, such as "Peter Kohler" and nothing is found, you will be asked if you want to reverse the names and search again.
  • Try searching variant forms for names beginning with De, De La, Von, etc.
  • sabiston
  • kohler peter
  • smith j
  • Oregon Health & Science
    University
AUTHOR/TITLE SEARCHING
AUTHOR/TITLE
  • If you know the author and at least part of the title, you can use this.
  • You must have the author's last name, but you can use any word from the title.
  • hellier and dentist retrieves the book
    Disease, Drugs and the Dentist
    by Hope and Hellier
TITLE SEARCHING
TITLE
  • The order of the title words must be exact.
  • The first few words of the title is usually enough.
  • Initial words (a, the) are ignored.
  • Check alternative spellings, e.g. pediatrics, paediatrics.
  • You can search for journal titles here but using the Journal Title search automatically limits your search to journals.
  • Add a vertical bar ( | ) after a title to retrieve only that title.
  • understanding cancer
  • pediatrics
  • paediatrics
  • biochemistry|
JOURNAL SEARCHING
JOURNAL
  • If you type in the entire title, you must type all the words, other than the initial words "a", "the", etc.
  • You can type in the first few words of the title to get a list of journals.
  • You can type in the NLM title abbreviation.
  • If the library also has the electronic version of the journal, you can often link directly to that journal.
  • Click on "Latest Received" to see the issues the have been recently received.
  • Using this feature automatically eliminates books from the results.
  • academic emergency medicine
  • journal of the american
  • acad emerg med
See other side for more search tips

SUBJECT SEARCHING
SUBJECT
  • The order of words matters.
  • MeSH headings cannot be "exploded" in the catalog the way they can be in MEDLINE, so make sure you are using the most specific MeSH term.
  • If you don't know the exact subject heading, do a keyword search with the term limited to the subject field, or click on the subject headings in a specific record to get other items with the heading.
  • Sometimes using keywords will retrieve more items when a subject search does not produce many items.
  • neoplasms nerve tissue not
    nerve tissue neoplasms
  • acne not skin diseases
  • neoplasms not cancer
KEYWORD SEARCHING
ADJACENCY
  • The order of words matters.
  • Multiple words are searched together as one phrase.
  • For different results, use and between each word or phrase.
  • hay fever
  • oregon and hospital
  • electronic journal and brain
TRUNCATION
  • Words may be internally or right-hand truncated using an asterisk *.
  • Use double asterisks ** for more than 5 characters.
  • wom*n and physician*
  • immun** and acquired
BOOLEAN
OPERATORS
  • Use and or or to specify multiple words in any field, any order.
  • Use and not to exclude words.
  • Use parentheses to group words when using multiple operators.
  • cancer or neoplasm*
  • (oregon or washington)
    or (portland and not maine)
PROXIMITY
  • Use near to specify words close to each other, in any order.
  • Use within # to specify words within a set range of each other. Symbol # may stand for any number.
  • oregon near institute
  • multnomah within 5 hospital
FIELDS
  • Specify fields to search, using field abbreviation.
  • Fields available for this database are
    • a: (author)
    • t: (title)
    • s: (subject)
    • n: (note.)
  • a:fletcher and t:morals
  • a:astley and a:hellier
  • s:oregon and (t:moral* or s:ethics)