1. Select the right kind of search
The catalog allows you to search by author, title, keyword, subject, publisher and copyright. Each kind of search can be useful.

• The Subject is a term that has been assigned to an item by a librarian. Subject terms come from specific lists, lists which may not contain the terms you are looking for. To find the term in our subject list that describes what you are looking for, do a search in FireTalk.
• Keyword searches look at the whole record for an item, including the summary, the title and the subject terms. Keyword searches can be useful if you are having no luck finding items using the subject search, but they can also return an unmanageable number of results.
• Title searches are best for finding specific titles or to retrieve all records that have certain words in their titles. You do not need to know the whole title; a word or phrase from the title will be enough to retrieve it.
• Author searches find all items by a particular author. A “personal author” is a person who has written the material. A “corporate author” is an agency that has authored a work or produced a video, such as the University of Arizona or the NFPA.
• Publisher searches find all materials that have been published the publisher you specify. This can be useful to find other textbooks or materials by the same company.
• Copyright searches help to limit the results to only materials from that date. This is helpful if you are searching for the most recent edition of a book.

2. Using the right term.

• When you enter multiple words into the search line, the computer will look for them as a phrase. A search for “arson fires” will only retrieve records that have that phrase in the record. They will not retrieve every record that contains “arson” or “fires.”
• Explore FireTalk and see what terms are available in the database.
• Use the Index to determine the correct spelling or format of terms and names.

3. Narrowing your results. Getting too many records? Try the following:

• You can search for two words at the same time that are not part of a phrase, but must both occur in the record. To do this, use a comma delimited list:
  Example: terrorism , homeland security; You will retrieve all of the records that contain BOTH of these terms.
• Look for terms labeled “narrower terms” in the FireTalk database.

4. Broadening your results. Not getting enough records? Try the following:

• Try a keyword search instead of a subject search.
• If you are doing an author search, try searching on only the last name and do not include the first. We may have a different form of the name in our database.
• Check FireTalk for broader terms.