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OCLC Support

Enter a keyword search

Discover how to enter a keyword search in Connexion client.

Guidelines

  • In the Command Line Search area, always precede the search term with an index label and punctuation (use a colon (:) for words or an equal sign (=) for phrases).
  • Access method index (am:)
    • Each punctuation mark is treated as a word division. Thus, www.oclc.org is treated as three separate words: www, oclc, and org.
    • Omit http: and https:.
    • Include stopwords when searching the Access Method index (am:).

      Example: To search for URL www.poets.org in the Command Line, type am:poets.
  • Internet qualifier (mt:)
    • Use the Internet qualifier to limit results to Internet resources only or to non- Internet resources only.
    • The system indexes only records containing field 856 with second indicator value <blank>, 0, or 1 as Internet. All other records are considered Non-Internet.
    • For a Command Line Search, enter mt:url to limit to Internet resources. To limit to non-Internet resources, enter not mt:url.
  • When WorldCat derived and keyword search results include words with diacritics, the records may be sorted out of sequence with words that do not have diacritics, whether you use the client or the browser interface.

Stopwords

The system ignores the following common words in a keyword search statement:

a
an
and
are
as
at
be
but
by
for
from
had
has
have
he
her
his
if
in
into
is
it
its
not
of
on
or
she
so
than
that
the
their
there
this
to
was    
were    
when
which
with    
would
you

To use any of these words as search terms, enclose them in quotation marks.

Example: To search for the title And Then There Were None, which includes three stopwords, type ti:"and" then "there" "were" none.

Selected indexes and examples

The following table lists often used keyword indexes with labels and examples of word, phrase, and whole phrase searches:

Index Label Enter command line search Enter guided serch (select index from list)
Corp/Conf Name cn:
(word)
cn:enron enron
cn=
(phrase)
cn=enron corp enron corp
cnw=
(whole phrase)
cnw=american journal of nursing company american journal of nursing company
Name au:
(word)
au:palatini palatini
au=
(phrase)
au=bowers jane palatini bowers jane palatini
Personal Name pn:
(word)
pn:salinger salinger
pnw=
(whole phrase)
pnw=salinger, pierre salinger, pierre
Publisher pb:
(word)
pb:thousand oaks thousand oaks
Series se:
(word)
se:vgm opportunities vgm opportunities
sew=
(whole phrase)
sew=gerontological care series no 453-458 gerontological care series no 453-458
Title ti:
(word)
ti:gerontological gerontological
ti=
(phrase)
ti:gerontological nursing gerontological nursing

Tips for entering guided keyword searches

  • Override the selected index by preceding the search term with another index label and punctuation (e.g., in the Search for box, enter ti=gerontological nursing to override another index that is selected in the adjacent list).
  • Search for an exact phrase in the selected word index by enclosing the words in quotation marks (e.g., in the Search for box, enter "gerontological nursing" with the Title (ti:) index selected).