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UC Library Search Help

The UC Library Search help guide.

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Advanced Search

Advanced Search is a great way to search a known title, author, or a specific collection of materials. From the UC Library Search page, you can select the Advanced Search link to the right of the search box. Advanced Search allows you to search the following specific collections, also called scopes, including:

  • Articles, books, and more
  • Library Catalog
  • Articles
  • Course Reserves
  • Special Collections & Archives

Select the appropriate radio button of the collection you want to search, use the various drop down menus to search specific fields, and add the title, author, subject, or keyword to search. Please note you can focus in on a certain format, language, and time frame as well.

Using the advanced search screen with filters to search the library catalog for a specific book title, and an author's last name.

 

For example, a researcher can tell UC Library Search to do the following using Advanced Search:

  1. Search the Library Catalog scope
  2. and use the Title field to look for the exact title "Capital in the Twenty-First Century,"
  3. and specify that the name "Piketty" appear in the Author field,
  4. and limit the results to the Material Type "Books".

These steps ensure that the user does not retrieve book reviews, chapters, or videos with the words Capital in the Twenty-First Century somewhere in the record.

 

 

 

Scopes

As mentioned above, Advanced Search allows you to search specific collections in UC Library Search, also called scopes.

  • Articles, books, and more - This scope is searching all UC resources, as well as a centralized index of citations provided by a vendor.
  • Library Catalog - This scope searches all UC resources but excludes articles and book chapters.
  • Articles - This scope searches journal articles.
  • Course Reserves - This scope searches across the material placed on course reserve.
  • Special Collections & Archives - This scope searches across material that is managed by UC Irvine's Special Collections & Archives department.

Additional Specialized Searches

In addition UC LIbrary Search's Simple and Advanced Search modes, users can also use the menu at the top of the UC Library Search page to access:

  • Browse - Browse works by Author, Title (or the first few words of a title), Subject, Call number, or Series.
  • BrowZine - BrowZine helps scholars easily find, read, and monitor thousands of scholarly journals available from your university or college library, or through Open Access publishers, covering all disciplines.
  • Journals@UCI - Search for specific journals, magazines, and newspapers by title or ISSN, or browse journals by topic.
  • Databases@UCI - Search for subscription databases by title or keyword. You can also find a list of databases by using the Databases A-Z list.