Browse Search

The Browse search option produces a list in the alphabetic vicinity of the term you typed. The second item in the list is the closest match and will be highlighted. From there you can browse forward or backward in the list.

When a catalog term is searched, the type of term browsed displays above the browse list. The number of heading occurrences displays in a column at the right of the search term. You can display a sublist for headings linked to more than one record by clicking the record. The following search indexes support browsing.

• Author – Browses last name only
• Call Number – Browses only one library at a time, displaying each number of copies
• General – Browses only subject indexes
• Periodical Title – Browses only the periodical index
• Series
• Subject
• Title
• Title Control Number – Browses by original prefix and subsequent digits

It is possible to browse an empty search string. All items for the selected search criteria appear, starting at the beginning of the browse list. The indexes selected in the Item Search window are ignored for this type of search. You cannot search ALL libraries using the Browse search with the call number index. You must select a library for this search.

Keyword Search

The Keyword search option locates and displays records that contain the terms you entered. The terms AND, NOT, OR, and XOR are treated as boolean operators by default in Keyword searches. The following search indexes can be used with Keyword searching.

• Author
• General
• Periodical Title
• Series
• Subject
• Title

If you are searching an author, subject, title, or periodical title, the terms you type will retrieve records with the terms typed in the same field of the specified category. If you perform a general search, records with the terms in any one of the fields will be retrieved. The brief list includes author, title, and publication year information. Additional call number information for the highlighted record displays in the Call Number/Item tab under the list of records. If a search retrieves no results, a browse list beginning with the entered text is displayed.

The Title Control Number search index always retrieves a browse list using the Keyword search. You can also display a single record using the Keyword search if the entire number is entered. The following search indexes support this kind of searching.

• Call Number
• Control ID
• Item ID
• ISBN

Boolean Operators

Operators link search terms and define the relationship between them. Operators help to focus the search. Boolean operators (AND, NOT, OR, and XOR) locate records containing matching terms in the library catalog. You can use Boolean operators to connect words or phrases between more than one text input field, or use Boolean operators to connect words or phrases within a text input field. The following list explains each operator.

• AND – Symphony locates records containing all of the specified terms. For example, a subject search on “cats AND dogs” locates records that contain information on both cats and dogs. Records about only cats or records about only dogs are excluded.
• NOT – Symphony locates records containing the first search term but not the second. For example, a subject search on “cats NOT dogs” locates records only about cats, and excludes any records about cats that also contain information about dogs.
• OR – Symphony locates records matching any or all of the specified terms. For example, a subject search on “cats OR dogs” locates records that contain information only about cats, records only about dogs, and records that contain information on both cats and dogs.
• XOR – Symphony locates records matching any one of the specified terms but not all of the specified terms. For example, a subject search on “cats XOR dogs” locates records only about cats and only about dogs. Records that contain information on both cats and dogs are excluded.

Positional Operators

Positional operators (SAME, WITH, NEAR, ADJ) locate records in which the search terms are in close proximity. Positional operators can be used to connect words or phrases within a single field entry.

• SAME – Symphony locates records in which a bibliographic record field contains all of the specified terms.
• WITH – Symphony locates records in which a field contains a sentence with all of the specified terms.
• NEAR – Symphony locates records in which a field contains all of the search terms adjacent to each other; however, the order of the terms does not have to match the order they were entered.
• ADJ – Symphony locates records in which a field contains all of the search terms adjacent to each other and in the order they were entered.

Substitution and Truncation

Symphony allows the symbols ? and $ to be used to represent substitution and truncation. Use the ? symbol as a substitute for a missing character in a search term. Use the $ symbol to truncate a search term. These two symbols can be used together or separately. These symbols may only be used at the middle or end of a term, not as the first character of the term.

Note Many symbols/characters are used to enhance a catalog search, such as relational operators and the symbols ? and $. To literally search these symbols/characters, enclose them with quotation marks.

Substitution

The ? symbol is used as a substitute for a missing character in a search term, usually when you are unsure of a spelling or when you want to find two forms of one word.

Example Type wom?n in the search field. Symphony locates the appropriate records containing either “woman” or “women.”

Truncation

Truncation is unlimited character substitution. The $ symbol is used to truncate search terms and can represent a single characters, many characters, or no characters. If you follow the $ symbol with a number, Symphony limits the number of characters matched. When more than one term in a search expression is truncated, each term is searched for all variations. When truncated words produce too many variations to search, a partial list is retrieved.

Example If you type Jame$ in the search field, Symphony locates records containing the terms: Jame, James, Jameson, and Jamerton.

Stopwords

In Keyword searching, Symphony ignores specified words, called stopwords. This feature allows Symphony to search on the keywords of an expression. These stopwords are usually articles, prepositions, or conjunctions. The following list identifies defined stop words.

A

AN

AS

AT

BE

BUT

BY

DO

FOR

IF

IN

IT

OF

ON

THE

TO

Example If you type the title The Book of Lists in the Title field, Symphony locates items with the words "Book" and "Lists" in the title. The terms "the" and "of" are not searched. If you type a search expression that contains all stopwords, the following message appears.

Your search contains all stopwords

Enclose the expression in double quotation marks to prevent the stopwords from being ignored.

Punctuation

When the following punctuation marks are included in a search expression, Symphony either replaces the punctuation marks with spaces, or searches variations of the search expression containing the punctuation, or ignores the punctuation marks.

Note To search a punctuation mark as a literal character, the expression must be enclosed in quotation marks.

Periods

Symphony searches periods based on how this punctuation mark displays in the search expression. If not used as a decimal mark within a numeral, the period is replaced with spaces. If the period is used as a decimal mark, it is not replaced with a space.

Example

The title Vacationland U.S.A. would be searched as the following.

title ==> VACATIONLAND U S A

The title 98.6: a novel would be searched as the following.

Title ==> 98.6 NOVEL

Commas

Symphony also replaces commas within a search expression with a space.

Example The title Goodbye, Columbus, and Five Short Stories will be searched as the following.

Title ==> GOODBYE COLUMBUS FIVE SHORT STORIES

Hyphens

Search expressions containing hyphens are searched with the hyphen included. A search without the hyphen displays words both with and without the hyphen. For example, the title Camp-fire Girls will be searched as the following.

Title ==> CAMP-FIRE GIRLS

Only titles that include a hyphen between Camp and Fire will display. A search for Camp Fire Girls broadens the search to include the phrase “Camp Fire” with and without the hyphen.

Title ==> CAMP FIRE GIRLS

Title ==> CAMP-FIRE GIRLS

A search for the term as one word, Campfire Girls, returns only the following results.

Title ==> CAMPFIRE GIRLS

Numbers in a List

When you browse lists of numbers that should be located individually, insert a space between the numbers in the list. Symphony browses numbers separated by commas as if the numbers were not separated.

Example – Browse Entries for Numbers

Entering 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 will browse 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5.

Entering 1,2,3,4,5 will browse 12345.

Entering 5000 and 5,000 will browse 5000.

Searching by Publication Year

When a search is limited by publication year, you may wonder which fields are used.

When limiting a search by publication year, you are not actually using MARC21 fields or CENDI fields for this search. Instead, you are searching the Publication Year field, which is really a separate field maintained by Symphony, and not visible in the bibliographic display of the full record. The Publication Year field is populated when a record is created in the workstation or imported/loaded through the MarcImport Utility wizard or the SmartPort wizard. Symphony determines the Publication Year field by looking at the following information.

• The 008 fixed field, in the DATE1 segment
• The 008 fixed field, in the DATE2 segment
• The 260|c
• The record’s Format policy, and then looking for an entry with an entry type of Pub Date (YY), Pub Date (YYYY), Pub Date (YYYYMMDD), Pub Date (MMDDYYYY), or Pub Date (DDMMYYYY)

Symphony looks in the order given above, and as soon as a non-blank entry is found, the value is used for the publication year.

Note After a record has been created/loaded, modifying one of the above fields does not necessarily affect the Symphony Publication Year field. For instance, modifying a 260|c will not cause the Pub Year field to be updated if the 008 DATE1 or 008 DATE2 field contains a value.

If the DATE1 field contains a date or partial date (such as 19uu), it determines the date that appears in the Pub Year column of the search hitlist. Once a date has been entered in DATE1, the PubYear column will display that date until DATE1 is changed to another date. For example, if DATE1 contains the incorrect date of 1996 and the real date is unknown, the only way to clear 1996 from the PubYear is by typing "uuuu" in the DATE1 field. You cannot simply delete 1996 and leave the DATE1 field empty.

Miscellaneous Symbols

The following table contains additional special characters. These characters do not affect searching. Some of these characters are replaced by a space; some are ignored.

Punctuation Name	Punctuation Mark	Replacement or Action
Accent	`	Space
Ampersand	&	Ignored
Apostrophe/Single Quote	'	Ignored
Asterisk	*	Space
At/Each Sign	@	Space
Back Slash	\	Ignored
Brackets	[ ]	Spaces
Circumflex	^	Ignored
Colon	:	Space
Exclamation Point	!	Space
Forward Slash	/	Space
Number/Pound/Sharp	#	Space
Percentage Sign	%	Space
Plus Sign	+	Space (except for C++, which is indexed with both plus signs)
Semicolon	;	Space
Tilde	~	Space
Underscore	_	Space

Note Superscript and subscript characters may be searched by entering either the actual superscript or subscript character, or standard character equivalents.