How do I find a book...if I just have a topic?
If you have a topic or subject and want to find materials about that topic or subject, you would do a keyword search. Keyword searches are really helpful if you don't know a particular book title or an author. Before you start searching, you should choose your search terms or keywords. Think about your topic, and pick out the main ideas or concepts in the topic. Then express each concept as an individual term or phrase. For example, your topic sentence might be "What is the effect of television violence on children?" The concepts or ideas in that sentence would be effect, television, violence, and children. These terms or phrases are called keywords, and are the terms you'll use to search databases for articles and information on you topic.
You can look for you keyword anywhere in the record, or focus the search for that term to a part of the catalog record by choosing a qualifier from the Search by: menu.
The results of your search will be a list of items that deal with or are related
to your topic. If you got too many results in your search, you can add another
keyword to narrow your search even more.