A patron asks to see a book on photo restoration but they can’t recall the book’s title. Or author. If you type in a “likely” title, it probably won’t find anything even though a good book on photo restoration is available.
The search method depends upon what information you DO know and what kind of record you hope to find. Selecting the catalog field (title, author, subject, keyword) is a component of the search itself.
Title: Best for exact or near-exact title wording. A unique, distinctive title will find that book, but there may be many titles that have short titles or similar common words in the title. The word “a” or “an” or “the” may or may not be included in your catalog search. You may also not want to include the subtitle. If you don’t find a record, check spelling; you might want to include or leave out some words of punctuation. You might not need all the descriptive words if you can just use the unique and most distinctive words. Do NOT assume the record is not found.
Author: Helpful when you want the work by that person, not any specific title. Search the last name carefully. Compare last name; first name; initials. Is it the same person who is author; editor; translator; illustrator; compiler? Are these two people with similar names actually two different people? Is there an authority record that connects these different spellings and formats, which are all the same name or person? This doesn’t necessarily mean the author’s work has been found, so you’ll still have to check the publication data before you choose the record.
Subject: A more powerful search when the patron wants materials ABOUT a subject and is willing to read beyond one single book. Subject headings may be expressed through the system’s controlled vocabulary of words/phrases for that topic. This may result in a different search term than you’d expect to find. Example: The patron is looking for a book about old photo repair. This might be best found in the subject heading of photographic preservation or photographic conservation. When a useful bibliographic record is found, its Subject Headings provide an alternate search and discover related materials that may not share the same words in their titles.
Keyword: More general and more flexible and will probably search titles, notes, abstracts and subject headings or some combination thereof. Keyword will search in many different places for any combination of words and their order may be unimportant. Use keywords when you want information in the book, not in the title, or you don’t know the exact title, subject or author of the book. But be warned: Keyword is a broad search, and the results will be noisy. For instance, the keyword records could find records about old music; government; database; archival. Keyword is generally a better search when you use two precise keywords and fewer results will be returned than if you try to type a question or full sentence.
Find one topic and search the four catalog fields (title, author, subject, keyword) on the catalog to see the results for each.
Search the title (one you already know); search the author; search the subject heading as shown in the bibliographic record; choose two keywords for your topic. Compare the results in the catalog. Which one has the book you want? Which has the same subject? Which has too many books?
Try a search with a misspelled author or partial title. See how the results change.
Once you have a successful search result, don’t forget to verify that the record, edition, call number, location, and availability are still valid before you take the patron to the shelves! And, try to find the book for the patron using the information you KNOW and by selecting the right field for that.