Basic Search -
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| Name type . . . | Search Example . . . |
| personal name | steinbeck john |
| compound last name | de la mare walter |
| government agency | united states congressional budget office |
| organization | battelle memorial institute |
| company | american telephone and telegraph |
| conference | conference on teaching creative writing |
Search Tips:
- Omit initial articles (a, an, the, das, el, la, etc.) in any language.
- Always omit initial punctuation in any language (e.g., quotation marks, ¿). Also, omit intervening commas, periods, apostrophes, and most other punctuation. Exception: hyphens should always be retained.
- Searches are automatically truncated and retrieve catalog records beginning with the words, word roots or phrases enters. Do not use the question mark (?) for truncation.
- Personal author/creator
- Enter the author/creator's last name followed by the first name: mitchell margaret
- If the spelling of the last name is uncertain, enter as much as you know: dosto (omit first names, titles of nobility, etc.)
- Retain the hyphen in a hyphenated name: evans-pritchard
- For names with connectives (van, von, der), follow the conventions of the person's country or language: gogh vincent van
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Group authors/creators (government agencies, organizations, conferences)
- As with individual authors, search enough of the name to distinguish it
- In most instances, department is often abbreviated to dept; search using both forms to ensure that all relevant records are retrieved
- Search hierarchical names in full descending order: united states dept of defense
- Search both acronyms and full names to retrieve all relevant catalog records. Search opec as well as organization of petroleum exporting countries
- Proceedings of conferences, meetings, etc. can be found by searching on the full name of the conference: international symposium on x-ray microscopy
References and Scope Notes:
In search results, some retrieved headings will not link directly
to catalog records, but will supply the user with links to related
headings or scope notes (marked with the ![[ More Info ]](/peth04/20041015064721im_/http://catalog.loc.gov/images/seealso.gif){kind=small}
icon) as illustrated in the
screen below.
More detailed information on References and Scope Notes is available.
Alternative Search Options:If you do not find what you are looking for using an Author/Creator search, try a Command or a Guided search and type in whatever information you know. For example, if you do not know the specific name of a conference, try a Command search using what you do know (e.g., part of the name of the conference, location, and date: peace AND conference AND paris AND 1920). |
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