American History  

The library has two catalogs where one can search to get information:

"Classic" Catalog 

 The Classic Catalog is where one would go to search specific titles, subject headings, author names, isbn, and course reserves.

BOSS or Big Orange Search System

BOSS takes the Classic Catalog and combines it with results from all of the library's databases. The research results can be voluminous. However, once can use the results and start to peel back to get at what he/she truly needs.

Search Tips when using the catalog:

• Spelling matters. If you find no (or few) matches to a keyword search, double check spelling.
• If you find too many results, enter more keywords to be more specific.
• If you find no results, remove some keywords (you're being too specific), or broaden the search.
• When searching for titles, ignore A, An, and The when they start the title.

Combine terms with AND

Use to narrow a search and get fewer and more relevant results

For example: Erie AND Canal

Use OR to broaden the search:

Use to broaden a search and get more results. Good for synonyms and words with variant spellings.

For example: (Japan OR China) AND World War II

Truncation - the addition of a symbol (usually an asterisk *) at the beginning or end of a word stem in a keyword search to retrieve variants containing the root. For example, truncation is particularly useful in retrieving singular and plural versions of words.

Example: democra* would find democracy, democrat, democracies, democratic