Table of Contents | Before You Search I Find a Book | Get a Book | E-Books | Other Searches | Requests and Renewals I Exercise I Help

In this section we review accessing the library catalog to find a book.

Connect to the library catalog from the UMUC Information and Library Services Web page by clicking on the Books & Media link or directly from http://catalog.umd.edu/search=basic

Once you click on the link, you will see the basic search screen of catalogUSMAI and any search terms you enter in the search box will search the holdings of all sixteen of the USMAI libraries.

The default search option when you access the catalog is word/s anywhere (keyword search). One of the advantages of starting with a keyword search in all campuses is that the entire catalog record will be scanned for the terms you enter. If a record for an item in the catalog contains your terms anywhere, either in a subject field, title field, or the table of contents of a book listed in the record, you will retrieve the record. This search does not retrieve the full text of a book.

Finding Books by Topic

From the basic search screen you have the option to choose the type of search you want to perform on the main basic search menu of the catalog. The default search option is word/s anywhere (keyword search). This type of search is useful if you want an idea of the types of materials the library may own on a particular topic.

If you want to search for books on the topic of corporate culture for example, you can just type the term corporate culture in the search box and click on the search button. However, it's generally a good practice to join your main search concepts using "and" as a connector between search terms, as shown below.

Search Tips

• To retrieve more records on your topic, you can also try using synonyms with your search strategy when joining terms: (corporate or company) and culture
  
• To exclude U.S. companies or organizations from your search: (corporate or company) and culture not United States
  
• To perform a phrase search of no more than two words, place quotes around your search terms: "corporate culture"

Finding Books by Title or Author

If you know the title or author of the book you are looking for, choose the specific type of search from the menu to locate what you need more quickly.

• If you know the exact title or author name, choose the title beginning with... or author beginning with... search option.
• Use title word/s or author word/s if you are not sure of the exact title or author.

  

In the search shown below, we will search for corporate and culture as title word/s, which will limit our search to items with those two words in the title.

The examples below the search box will help you format your search correctly. The examples change depending on the type of search you select. In this case, the examples are grapes and wrath, grapes wrath. Click on when you see it next to search options for help using specific features of the catalog.

In the next section, we discuss viewing your search results and locating books.