Doing a keyword search on the main catalogue page does not always return optimal results, as it may include irrelevant items. For author searches of common names, it is better to select the "More Search Options" link and choose the "Browse search" option, which allows searching by author last name first. This focused search approach returns more manageable and relevant results than a general keyword search.

1. Search Options in our Catalogue (iBistro) You can get better results by using a (slightly) advanced searching feature.

2. When you do a search on the main page of the catalogue, you're doing a "keyword" search. This works well for some searches, but not others. Doing an author search for someone with a common name doesn't work well.

3. In this example we get 144 results for the author John Taylor, many of which are not books by John Taylor. This kind of sucks.

4. You'll get much better results if you follow the More Search Options link, and then select Browse search at the right of the page.

5. Enter your search (in this case the author, last name first) and click to select an author search. As you can see below, you may still have a bit of work to do if the name is very common, but now the results are manageable.

6. If you find yourself using this feature often, you can link to it directly. Get the url for the page by clicking on the Permalink option, and use this to create a desktop shortcut or bookmark.