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Adelphi University

Simple and Advanced Searching in OneSearch

Use Simple Search to find results that have your search term(s) anywhere in the item record, such as in the title, author, subject, abstract, and other areas. This is a good way to start if you are not sure exactly what you are looking for, but be aware that you may get more results than you need.

Use Advanced Search to target your search based on specific criteria or restrict your results to specific material type like books or articles, language, or date of publication.

Advanced Search Filters

Use advanced search filters to narrow down your search by specific fields such as title, author/creator, call number, or subject. Some (but not all) fields allow these extra modifications:

  • Contains: Matches any string that contains your terms in any order

  • Contains exact phrase: Matches any string that contains all of your keywords in the same order (same as using quotation marks); for example, “civil war” would match “American civil war reports” but not “civil proceedings during war”

  • Starts with: Matches any string that starts with your exact phrase; for example, “civil war” would match “civil war diaries” but not “American civil war”

Search Specific Fields

In Advanced Search you may search for text in specific fields. Note that capitalization does not matter even when using exact matching.

  • Title: Search for your text in only the title of the work.  

  • Author/Creator: Search for a specific author, editor, or contributor to a publication. 

  • Subject: Search by Subject. OneSearch uses Library of Congress Subject Headings, standardized terms that describe the contents of a resource.  

  • ISBN: Search for the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) of a book.

  • ISSN: Search for the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) of a journal or periodical.

  • Holding Call Number: Search by the call number of a book (the identifier that appears on the spine of a library book).

Combining Search Filters

You may add more than one search filter and combine them using boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT. For example, if you know both a partial title and author name, you can combine those with an AND operator to get only works that contain both those bits of information.

Example of combining search filters

You could also use the NOT operator to exclude results that you know are not what you are looking for—a popular work with a title similar to the more obscure one you are looking for, for example.

Restricting by Type, Language, or Date

Use the controls on the right side of Advance Search to limit your results further. This is especially useful when you know the type of work you are looking for (e.g., a book), are researching works in a particular language, or want to locate only the most recent scholarship on a topic.

Restrict results by type, language, or date