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Instructions and examples for Multiple Term Search

Select how you want the records to display. Following the text "Select Preferred Record Display," there are radio buttons to select record display.

1. Select Brief if you just want author, title, book number, web braille link, and publisher.
2. Select Full if you want to see the annotation and the rest of the record.
3. Select Tagged if you want to see the complete record with numeric MARC tags instead of field labels.

Search Form

The form contains three text boxes for entering search terms or phrases Each text box is followed by a drop down list containing field names. The first two drop down lists are followed by radio buttons that allow you to combine one search term with another.

First Text Box

In the first text box enter your primary search word or phrase, such as an author, title or subject in the first text box. Do not enter disconnected words. For example if searching for the title, Wizard of Oz, you can enter wizard of oz or oz, but not wizard oz.

If you are searching for an author, enter last name first. Do not enter punctuation.

Select the field you are searching from the drop down list that follows the text box. The list will default to searching every field of the record. You can restrict the search to these choices:

• Author (actually any name field, such as narrator, or the name of an organization)
• Title
• Subject Heading
• Note (use this to search for annotation fields or for searching for web braille)

If you have no other terms or fields for a search, skip the rest of the form and go to the Submit button and hit enter.

There are two more text boxes to further refine your search.

Radio Buttons

To continue go to the radio buttons. There are three.

And

is the default choice. It means that the records you retrieve must contain both the word or phrase in the previous text box and the word or phrase in the next text box.

Or

means that the records retrieved will contain the word or phrase from either or both of the text boxes.

And Not

means that the records retrieved must contain the word or phrase in the first text box, but it will not retrieve records if they contain the word or phrase in the second text box.

Second and Third Text Boxes

Go to the text box and enter your second word or phrase. Then go to the drop down list box of field names. If you are done, then go to the Submit link to do your search. If not, there is one more set of radio buttons, text box and drop down list of fields.

Notice that the second and third drop down list boxes contain two additional fields: material type and location. So, once you have entered your primary search (author, title, etc.), you can restrict a search to just one format with two steps.

1. Type your format choice in the text box using
   • braille for braille
   • sound for talking books
   • music for musical scores
2. Select material type from the drop down list.

You can restrict the search to just NLS materials by typing NLS in the text box and selecting location from the drop down list.

Tips and Examples

To search for all books by James Michener that are sound recordings in the NLS collections:

1. Type Michener James in the first text box, and select Author from the drop down list
2. Leave the radio button on And
3. Type sound in the second text box and select material type from the drop down field list.
4. Leave the radio button on And
5. Type NLS in the third text box and select location from the drop down list
6. Click on the Search button.

To search for Gone with the wind in braille:

1. Type gone with the wind in the first text box and select Title from the drop down list
2. Leave the radio button on And
3. Type braille in the second text box and select material type from the drop down list
4. Click on the Search button.

To search for all web braille books on the Civil War, excluding fiction:

1. Type Civil War, 1861-1865 in the first text box and select Subject from the drop down list. A note about the subject field.
2. Leave the radio button on And in the first group of radio buttons
3. Type web braille in the second text box and select notes from the drop down list.
4. Change the radio button to And Not in the second group of radio buttons
5. Type fiction in the third text box and select subject from the drop down list.
6. Click on the Search button.

NLS uses Library of Congress Subject Headings in this field. If you wanted to know what the subject heading was, first try a general search with just a phrase, such as Civil War and use the default field in the drop down list, and go to the submit link. This will produce a lot of hits but you can go through the full records to see what the what appears following the label: Subject. In this case the correct heading is United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865 so just use Civil War 1861 1865)

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