UWA Library | How to search the catalogue by title

When to search by title

The title index includes the titles of all forms of material - books, conference proceedings, audio-visual materials, microforms, music scores, electronic resources, and journals, but NOT articles in journals

Searching by title will locate all forms of a title, including series titles, variant or additional titles which have been added to enhance access, eg. the original title and the translated title of translated works.

Search by title when you know the exact title of an item.

If you know some of the words in the title but are uncertain of the exact title and correct word order, then use a KEYWORD search.

Search by title when you wish to find a list of titles within a series

To find all books in the series Advances in Anatomy Embryology and Cell Biology, type:

advances in anatomy embryology and cell biology, or
advances in anatomy

How to search by title

Word order

A title search looks for an exact letter-for-letter match of the word(s) you enter, in the order you enter them. The order in which you enter your search is therefore important. The result of a title search is a list of headings that begin with your search term. To view individual records for a particular heading, click on the heading.

Enter all or part of the title in the exact word order in which the title appears. The more complete the title entered the more accurate will be your search.

To find the title The Olympic Games: Melbourne 1956 type:

Olympic Games : Melbourne 1956 or
Olympic Games or
Olympic

When you search by title the system will retrieve all records containing titles that begin with the words or characters entered. For example, keying a title search "Australia" will retrieve all records containing not only all those containing "Australia" as the first part of the title but also all those containing "Australian" or "Australians" as the first part of the title. This is sometimes helpful if you know the first part of a title, but are unsure about the rest.

Truncation

To restrict a search to only words entered (and not to expand it by searching the index for all headings beginning with these terms), key a vertical bar ("|") at the end of the search statement. This is used to restrict a search, for instance to a single word, or group of words, or group of characters. For example, a search for "cat|" will only retrieve records with the heading "cat", not records containing headings beginning with "cat", such as "catalogue" or "catch" or "cat domestic", etc. A search for "australian|" will only retrieve records with the heading "Australian", not records containing "australian aboriginal", "australian academy", "australian accent", etc.

Initial articles

Initial articles in English ("the", "a", "an") are ignored by the system. You may choose to input them or not; either way, the system will retrieve the correct records. For example, you may search for The Irish Times, or Irish Times.

However, initial articles in languages other than English should not be input. The following list of initial articles may be helpful:

French:
la, le, les, l', un, une

German:
eine, ein, der, die, das

Italian:
il, lo, la, i, gli, le, uno, una

Spanish:
el, las, lo, la, un, los

Portuguese:
um, uma, o, os, a, umas, uns

Articles appearing within the title should be included in the search statement.

Initial words equivalent to articles

To search for a title beginning with a word which is also an article in English ("the," "a," or "an"), eg. the title "A to Z, the alphabet", type the initial word twice. Otherwise, the system treats the word as an article, and ignores it.

To find the title: A J P Taylor A Biography type:

a a j p taylor

To find the title: À la recherche du temps perdu type:

a a la recherche

In the above examples, the system treats the first "a" as an article, and ignores it.

Initial articles as proper names

Non-English articles used as proper names at the beginning of a title should be input.

To find the title Los Angeles at 25 Mph type:

Los Angeles at 25 mph

Punctuation and spacing

Punctuation can be omitted when entering a title search. For example, hyphens may be either included or replaced with a space. Quotation marks and apostrophes are not necessary.

However, spaces between the initials of a name or numbers included in a title may influence the result of a title search.

The searches:

1-2-3 at work or 1 2 3 at work
and
123 at work

will return different results. If unsuccessful with your first search then try both variations.

Special characters and numbers

The system reads the ampersand ("&") as "and" within a phrase. Hence, if you type the title "history & theory" it will display titles such as "history and theory."

If numbers, dates, map scales, etc., are part of a title, then first search by entering the number and, if unsuccessful, then try searching by the number spelt out as a word:

11 part-songs and secular choruses or Eleven part-songs and secular choruses.

Spelling

Some titles may be located under variant (for example, American English) spelling.

behavior or behaviour

If you cannot locate a title under one spelling of a word then try another