Keywords

The Keywords option searches for items containing your keywords anywhere in the catalogue record including title, author, subject heading and notes fields. Use it to search for books on a topic or when you don't know full details of the book you want.

Use the truncation symbol ? to search for plurals etc: enter child? to search for child, children, childhood

Choose synonyms or alternative terms to represent each concept in your topic. Use the Boolean operators and, or, not to combine search terms:
and will find records containing both terms: fire and vegetation
or will find records containing either term: fire or burning
not will exclude records containing unwanted terms: vegetation not grassland
brackets group similar terms so that they are processed in the correct order: (fire or burning) and vegetation
See Boolean searching if you do not understand how and, or and not work.
Use quotes to search adjacent words: "french revolution"
Use quotes to search hyphenated words which the catalogue treats as two words; the hyphen can be absent or present; use or to enter the single word version as an alternative:"pre war" or prewar, "hand-book" or handbook
To search keywords in particular fields of a record such as title, author or subject heading, use field codes before a term:
- to find books by atkins with chemistry in the title:
  nkey atkins and tkey chemistry
- to find books on Shakespeare's King Lear:
  skey shakespeare and skey lear
- to find books on evolution published in the 1990s:
  skey evolution and 260C 199?
See other field codes. Alternatively, use the Guided Keyword Search for the same purpose.