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Search Tips Katalog Plus

General Remarks

By default, our Katalog Plus sorts results by relevance. The following rules apply to lists of results in ‘Books and more’: Items in which your search terms appear in the fields author and/or title will appear above items where your search terms appear only in the field publisher or in the content information (e. g. table of contents). Furthermore, items will appear higher in the list when your search terms appear more than once in a record. Likewise, the ranking favours items with titles consisting of a single word matching your search term.
You narrow down your results by using additional criteria (e. g. format, topic, author, year of publication). We recommend filtering results for a specific year of publication instead of entering a year of publication into the search box.
If you enter more than four search terms, your results will not necessarily contain all of them. To change this, use AND or + between the words.
Use the phrase search to search for an exact word order.
Wildcards

Use the question mark ? to replace a single character.
For example, to search for either text or test, type te?t.
Use the asterisk * to replace any number of characters.
For example, to search for test, tests or tester, write test*.
You can also use the asterisk within a word. For example, searching for bio*gy will find records containing biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, biometeorology etc.
Phrase Search

Use quotation marks “” to search for an exact word order, e. g. “grapes of wrath”.
The phrase search is also useful to search for a particular author: Enter “last name, first name” to search for a person, e. g. “darwin, charles”.
Search Operators

To search more precisely, you can combine search terms with the following Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT.
Please note: Boolean operators have to be written in capital letters!
Search Operator And

By default, the catalogue automatically inserts AND between up to four search terms. If you want to search for records containing five or more search terms, use AND between the words.
Alternatively, write + directly in front of a word to search only for items containing this word.
Search Operator Or

Use OR between two words to search for items which contain one or both of these words.
For example, if you are looking for items which contain the terms alcoholism or drug abuse, enter alcoholism OR “drug abuse”.
Search Operator Not

Use NOT to exclude a term. For example, to search for records containing the word economics but not the word Keynes, write economics NOT keynes.
Please note: The operator NOT can only be used together with two or more terms. You will not receive any results when searching for NOT economics.
Alternatively, write - directly in front of a word to exclude this word, e. g. economics -keynes.
Complex Search Terms

To search by subject using multiple search operators, please consider that by default, operators are processed in the following order:
1. NOT
2. AND
3. OR
Use brackets to perform your search in a different order. Wildcards and phrase search can also be used in complex search terms.
For example, to search for literature on witchcraft in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age, use witchcraft AND (“Middle Ages” OR “Early Modern Age”).
If you are looking for literature on the diagnosis and therapy of knee injuries, but want to exclude all documents dealing with dog(s), enter (knee AND diagnosis AND therapy) NOT dog*.
Proximity Operators

In “Articles & More” you cannot only use Boolean operators but also proximity operators, which ensure that your search terms appear within a certain number of words from one another. This is extremely helpful for full-text searches.
The operator N (=NEAR) is useful if the order in which the search terms appear is not important to you. In contrast, the operator W (=WITHIN) can be used to find the terms in the exact order specified.
Example 1: malaria N5 plasmodium (search terms may be up to 5 words apart, word order is not important)