UWA Library | How to search the catalogue by author

When to search by author

Use this search to find works BY

individual (personal) authors - editors, composers, performers, artists etc.
corporate authors - government bodies, organisations, conferences, educational institutions etc.

To find works ABOUT a person or corporate body, enter the name as a SUBJECT search.

Examples are given below of different types of author searches:

Author search by:	Search example:
Personal name	hockney david
Multiple last name	de la mare walter
Government body	western australia dept of agriculture
Organisation	australian medical association
Conference	conference on accounting research

An author 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 an author search is a list of headings that begin with your search term. To view individual records for a particular heading, click on the heading.

For personal authors, type the surname first, as this is the order in which these names are stored in the index.

domingo, placido

If you enter the author’s first name first the system will not find it, but will give you the option to change your search to the last name first by clicking on the other heading offered.

Your entry ezra pound would be here ------ Change search to Pound, Ezra

If you don’t know which part of the name is the surname, try different combinations.

Roman Pina Chan or Pina Chan Roman

For corporate names, type normal word order. If you are not sure of the correct word order for a government body or a conference name use a KEYWORD search.

More than one author

When authorship is shared between two or three persons or corporate bodies, all authors are indexed, and you can search for any of them. When it is shared between more than three, only the first author is indexed. If you are not sure of the author, use a TITLE search.

More than one form of name

For some authors – mainly literary authors and composers – the system provides additional help in redirecting you to from a name heading which is not used in the Library's catalogue to one which is used.

For Example., if you search by the real name of an author who writes under a pseudonym, the system will direct you to the pseudonym.

Dudevant Aurore 1804 1876 -- see --Sand George 1804 1876

If you search by the name of an author who writes under several names, the system will direct you to the other names.

Keneally Thomas -- see also --Coyle William 1935

Abbreviations and acronyms

Use the complete name rather than abbreviations or acronyms.

united nations environment program, not UNEP

Punctuation

Punctuation can be omitted when entering an author search. When searching for hyphenated names, you can include the hyphen, or replace it with a space.

rimsky-korsakov or rimsky korsakov

How to search the catalogue by author