Standard OPAC Searches: This section will further acclimate you to the OPAC search process. Searches are broken down by type (Basic, Advanced and Journal) and searchable fields in each type.

Basic Search

The Basic Search screen in the Simmons OPAC offers a drop-down menu of fields that you can search. There are several options, but we will look at three of the most common: Author/Creator, Title, and Keyword. For a visual example of these searches, view the OPAC Basic Search Tutorial. Below we will highlight a few key points about each field.

Things to note:

Author/Creator: The author names must be entered in the "Last name, First name" format.
Subject: Subject searches use very specific words and phrases: controlled vocabulary. Subject searching is like using the Yellow Pages, where if you look for "hair dressers" it might tell you to "see Beauty Salons". Similarly, doing a subject search will often give you a list of terms from the controlled vocabulary. You can then click the most relevant term, and see a list of titles in our collection that have that subject.
Keyword: You can use Boolean operators, truncation and other tricks to narrow or broaden your search. See the previous page (Opac Intro) for a full explanation. You can combine these tricks for maximum power, just keep in mind that you may need to use parens to execute the search properly.

For example: (child* or teen* or kid*) and (internet or web)

Limiting Results

Once you submit your search, you will get a results list, which might be several pages long. If you get too many results, you may want to limit them for more precise results. To do so, click on the "Limit/Sort" button at the top of the page. You can limit in the following ways:

Available items
Location in the library
Words in certain fields (e.g. author, title, subject)
Material format
Publication year or language

Related Resources

Each record on the results list includes hyperlinks to other results. For example, clicking on the author's name in a record will automatically run an OPAC author search, and give you a results list of all books by that author in our collection. Similarly, clicking on a subject within a record will run an OPAC subject search, and your results list will include works with that subject and related subjects.

Advanced Search

Advanced searching gives you ultimate control. It allows you to search in several fields at once - in a sense, combining the author, title, subject and other basic individual field searches. It also lets you limit results before you see them, so that you only find resources in a specific location, of a particular material type or publication date, etc.

A visual example of the Advanced Search is available: OPAC Advanced Search Tutorial.

Journal Search

Journal searches work like a title search, but the results are automatically limited to periodicals. Remember to search by the title of the journal and not, for example, by the title of a specific article within the journal.

Journal search results

The results might list a journal title twice, if the journal is available from Simmons both in print and electronic format. The record labeled "Web Resource" will provide a link to the electronic database(s) that provide access to the journal.

If a journal's title has changed, the record will indicate the change at the bottom, in a field titled "Continues" or "Supercedes". There will be a hyperlink to the record for the journal's old name. Similarly, the record for the old name will contain a "Cont'd by" field, with a hyperlink to the record for the new name.

A tutorial is available as a visual example: OPAC Journal Search Tutorial.