Advanced Search Tips

The Basic and Advanced Search screens in the PINES catalog are relatively self-explanatory, but there are a number of search tips you can make use of below if you wish to improve your search capabilities. You can use these tips in the basic search screen or even in a PINES keyword search box that you've included on your web site.

Syntax	Definition	Example	Example Results
*	Wildcard (asterisk)	teach*	Keyword search returns teach, teacher, teachers, teaching, etc.
-	Does not contain (minus sign)	teenage ninja -mutant	Keyword search returns records that include the words teenage and ninja, but not any of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles books.
“”	Search as a phrase (quotation marks)	“the help”	Adding quotes will search for the exact phrase instead of the separate words.
after(year)/before(year)/between(year,year)

Limits search by publication date (includes the year specified)

Kennedy assassination between(1963,1966)

Finds books that were published in the years immediately following the incident.

#available

Filter by availability

GMAT #available

Shows only the books that are currently shown as being available on the shelves (same as checking the Available checkbox on the search results screen).

sort(pubdate)

sort(pubdate)#descending

Sort search results by publication date (defaults to oldest first)

GMAT sort(pubdate)#descending

Sorts list of results with the newest ones first (same as the sort by dropdown list on the search results page).

sort(titlesort)

Sort search results by title (A-Z)

Nora Roberts sort(titlesort)

Returns books in order by title.

sort(authorsort)

Sort search results by author’s last name.

weight loss sort(authorsort)

audience(a,b,c,d,j)

Limit search results by the audience type fixed field (a=0-5, b=6-8, c=9-13, d=14-17, j=0-17) – an item can only be assigned one audience type

Neil Gaiman audience(a,b,c)

Returns books that are children’s books only.

kw: or keyword:

title: or ti:

author: or au:

subject: or su:

Use to create complex searches in a basic search field

ti:help au:stockett

Searches records that contain “help” in the title fields and “stockett” in the author fields. Examples

au:gaiman audience(a,b,c) after(2013) sort(titlesort)
ti:easter audience(a,b) sort(pubdate)#descending
kennedy assassination between(1963,1966) sort(authorsort)

Additional Resources

PDF Version of These Tips
Bibliographic Queries in Evergreen
(Please note that this documentation is from an earlier version of Evergreen and some of the syntax has changed.)