MNLINK.ORG is a state-wide consortium of libraries, mostly at colleges and universities. You can search the combined MNLINK library catalog to find books at any member library. Many (not all!) books are requestable - you can request to have a book sent from another library to yours so you can check it out. This usually takes about 2-5 days.
The Breck Library Catalog and most online databases can be searched using keywords. A keyword search will find any listing that contains the word or words, whether it is in the subject heading, title, description, author’s name, or a word from a chapter heading or description of the book. Keyword searching is a powerful search feature which can result in thousands of hits.
Caution! When you type just one word, you will get a listing of all items that include your search word anywhere in the description, such as the subject headings, title, or the author’s name. For example, if want books about the city of Chicago, you probably don't want to include books about the artist Judy Chicago, or the Chicago Review Press books on practicing to take professional nursing exams. A subject search would give you better results in this case.
Use the Boolean Search Tips to focus search statements to produce better, more precise results in keyword searches, and check Subject Searching to see if it works best for your topic. You'll probably want to use a combination of the two.
Boolean logic is a system of operators, the most common being
AND and OR, which can be used to link keywords and phrases in order to perform
precise searches.
Using the OR operator
broadens or widens a search to include documents containing either
keyword. The OR search is useful when
there are several common synonyms for a concept. To find information on the topic of
weightlifting use the keywords weightlifting or bodybuilding.
The computer searches for all documents containing the word weightlifting and all documents containing bodybuilding. In other words, all documents containing either the word "weightlifting" or the word "bodybuilding" will be retrieved. The OR
search usually produces large numbers of documents.
Truncation offers another strategy to make your searching more efficient. You may insert a truncation symbol after the root or beginning of a word. The results will include variations of the word. The most common truncation symbol is the asterisk (*).
For example, a search for:
psycho*
will find records that have any of the words:
psychology, psychological, psychologist, psychotic, etc.