Library Catalog
What the Library Catalog contains:
Records for both print and online books, journals, newspapers, conference proceedings, sound recordings and scores, videos, archival collections, databases, maps, and more.
What the Library Catalog does not contain:
- Links to individual journal or newspaper articles. For article searching, you can start your search at our Articles & Full-Text search.
- Material owned by other libraries and institutions. For locating and requesting this material use WorldCat.
See the "Expanding your search" section under "Additional tips" below for information on accessing these tools through the Library Catalog.
Basic Search and Browsing
Basic Search
The search is a general keyword search with all words entered needing to appear in the record for it to show in the search results.
Use the drop-down menu to limit your keyword search to:
- All Fields
- Title
- Journal Title
- Title Begins With
- Author
- Author Browse (A-Z) Sorted by Name
- Author Browse (A-Z) Sorted by Title
- Subject
- Subject Browse (A-Z)
- Call Number
- Publisher
Put exact phrases in quotes: "financial aid"
Use the facets on the left hand side to further refine your results by date, language, format, etc.
Truncation and wildcards are not currently supported in basic search. Usually, search terms with common suffixes are automatically searched. For example, a search for star will include stars, starred and starring.
Browse
To find books and other materials, browse through an alphabetical list of authors by name, authors sorted by title, and subjects, or browse through a list of related titles by call number. Below are some tips and examples for constructing effective browses:
Author Browse (A-Z) Sorted by Name
- Enter the author's last name first. For example: Dickens, Charles
Author Browse (A-Z) Sorted by Title
- Enter the author’s last name first. The results will be grouped by title. For example: Shakespeare, William
- To enter author and title, use > or |. For example: Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827 | Fidelio
Subject Browse (A-Z)
- Enter broad subject terms. For example: Universities and colleges
- To enter subject subdivisions, use > or |. For example: China > History
Call Number Browse
Using Advanced Search
Advanced Search
Using the first dropdown in each row, select how the terms in the search box are related to each other for the search you want to do:
- all: You want search results that contain every word in this search box, but you don't care whether they're next to each other, or what order they come in.
- any: You want search results that contain any of the words in this search box, but you don't care if some are missing.
- begins with: You only want search results where at least one field begins with the words in this search box.
- phrase You only want search results that contain all the words in this search box, in this particular order.
When using multiple rows, use the radio buttons to indicate how the terms in each row relate to each other for the search you want to do.
- and: You want search results that contain the terms from both rows. This will tend to narrow your search.
- or: You want search results that contain the terms from either row, This will tend to broaden your search.
- not: You want search results that specifically don't include the terms from this row. This will tend to narrow your search.
When using multiple rows, put the terms connected with or before the terms connected with and or not. The Advanced Search processes each row sequentially, top to bottom, so you want to broaden your search fully before you start to narrow it. For example, search "Latin America" (as a phrase) OR "South America" (as a phrase) AND "folklore."
Results can be filtered by date, language, format, etc., using the facets on the left side of the page after submitting the search.
Usually, search terms with common suffixes are automatically searched. For example, a search for star will include stars, starred and starring.
Keywords can be limited to more fields in the Advanced Search:
- All Fields
- Title
- Journal Title
- Author
- Subject
- Call Number
- Series
- Publisher
- Place of Publication
- Publisher Number/Other Identifier
- ISBN/ISSN
- Notes
- Donor Name
Additional Tips
Expanding Your Search
If you are not finding an item in the Library Catalog, or want to expand your search to include articles or items available from non-Cornell libraries you can use the "Looking for more" links in the top left of the library catalog. The results from Libraries Worldwide will run your search in the WorldCat Catalog where you can locate and request items for delivery via Borrow Direct or Interlibrary Loan. The articles link will run your search in our general article search powered by EBSCO Discovery Service.
Saving/Exporting Multiple Search Results
From your search results click on the Select button to the right of each item.
Once you have selected all of your items, go up to the Selected Items link to get to a page where you can print, email or export multiple citations using the Endnote or RIS format.
Texting a Call Number
A link to text the call number to your mobile device is available next to the call number of each item on an individual record.
