From the user's point of view: how to search the Library Catalog (Polaris PAC) at Wauconda Area Library

1. H O W O U R PAT R O N S U S E P O L A R I S
OPAC SEARCHING

2. PATRON CATALOG (AKA “OPAC”) VIEW
OPAC = ONLINE PUBLIC ACCESS CATALOG
Narrowing your
search
Keyword Searching

3. PART 1: KEYWORD SEARCHING
Underneath Keyword Search, you can narrow your search
by selecting one of the fields below.

4. LIMIT BY
-You can use Limit By in conjunction with
search by to find the TYPE of material
you’re looking for.

5. EXERCISE ONE: FIND A JUVENILE
HISTORICAL FICTION TITLE
Step 1: Select the type of
material. In this case, let’s
try to find a book.
Step 2: Select a subject.
You can select Historical
Fiction from here.

6. EXERCISE ONE: FIND A JUVENILE
HISTORICAL FICTION TITLE
Step 3: Select Juvenile for
the target audience.
Step 4: Put an asterisk in the keyword
search. This is the wildcard search, which
will pull up anything that fits our search
limiters.
Step 5:
Hit Go!

7. EXERCISE ONE: FIND A JUVENILE
HISTORICAL FICTION TITLE
Results! As you can
see, you have 28
results. There are
ways to limit your
searches even
further which
Polaris will show
you on the left-hand
panel.

8. EXERCISE 2: FIND JAMES PATTERSON AUDIOBOOKS
Step 1: Type in
the author’s name
into the Keyword
Search.
Step 2: Select “Author” from the
“Search by” field.

9. EXERCISE 2: FIND JAMES PATTERSON AUDIOBOOKS
Step 3: Select
Audiobook
from “Limit by.”

10. EXERCISE 2: FIND JAMES PATTERSON AUDIOBOOKS
Results! You can see we have
202 audiobooks by Patterson.
To limit by eAudiobooks or
Audiobooks on CD, select
Audiobook on CD under Type
of Material, or to Electronic
Resources for eAudiobooks.

11. PART 2: BROWSE SEARCHING
Let’s try using the Browse search function. Before we were
using keywords. Browse is a great feature if the patron doesn’t
know exactly what they’re looking for.

12. BROWSE SEARCHING
In the Search for list, select an index option (Title, Author, Subject,
Series, or Call Number).
In the that begins with box, type the first few letters or
numbers of the title, author’s name, the subject word, the
series name, or the call number.

13. BROWSE SEARCHING
After selecting Go! You will find listings in sets of ten. Try clicking on
a listing – pick The cat in the hat.

14. BROWSE SEARCHING
The search will yield titles in several different formats.

15. PART 3: PHRASE SEARCHING
A phrase search looks for matches to multiple words, in the same
order you typed them. You might choose a phrase search when you
know the phrase is part of a specific title, not necessarily at the
beginning of the title.

16. PHRASE SEARCHING
Typing Search Text - Phrase Searches
• Case, spaces, punctuation - Letter case, multiple spaces, and punctuation are
ignored. Omit hyphens in numbers. However, you can include the following
characters if they immediately precede or follow a letter or number (no space
between): + # % $
• Multiple words - Word order matters. For example, a phrase series search
for drew nancy may yield no results. The same search for nancy drew lists the
titles in the Nancy Drew mystery series. If you are searching for an author, enter
the author’s name in this format: last name, first name because that is the way
the name appears in the catalog records.
• Wildcard characters - You can type a part of a word and use a wildcard
character. The wildcard character asterisk (*) represents the rest of the word. For
example, if you type King*, the results include words such as King, Kingsley,
and Kingford. The question mark (?) represents exactly one character. For
example, wom?n finds woman and women. If the question mark occurs at the end
of a word, it does not act as a wildcard character, so you can find titles like what
color is your parachute? Also, if you type a backslash character before any
wildcard character, the wildcard character is treated as text.

17. PHRASE SEARCHING
Step 1: Choose a
limiting field. For this
search, we will leave
“Any Field” selected.
Step 2: Limit by book for
the purposes of this
search.

18. PHRASE SEARCHING
Step 3: Type in expectant mothers
and hit Go!

19. PART 4: PHRASE SEARCHING
Results!
Notice how
the phrase
expectant
mothers
comes up in
both the title
and
description

20. PART 5: ADVANCED SEARCHING
Let’s put everything we’ve learned together – advanced
searching time!

21. ADVANCED SEARCHING
• Advanced Searching brings everything together. You can
use the fields from other searching styles with the
addition of AND/OR/NOT.
• AND/OR/NOT are Boolean search terms.
• Boolean logic is a system of showing relationships between sets
by using the words AND, OR, and NOT. (The term Boolean
comes from the name of the man who invented this system,
George Boole.) Boolean logic is recognized by many electronic
searching tools as a way of defining a search string.*
*http://library.uaf.edu/ls101-boolean

22. ADVANCED SEARCHING
Step 1: Add as many fields as necessary. For purposes of
this search, let’s try subject.

23. ADVANCED SEARCHING
Step 2: After entering Subject as the first limiting field, let’s try
a Boolean term. Select “AND.”
Step 3: Enter the word
romance as the
subject and
Shakespeare as the
author. This will give
us romance titles by
Shakespeare.

24. ADVANCED SEARCHING
Step 4: You can limit
by the type of item,
as in other
searches. Let’s try
limiting it to books.

25. ADVANCED SEARCHING
You’ll find that
“AND” has limited
it down too much.
Try to experiment
with these
Boolean operators
– you will find
“OR” will yield
7198 results for
Romance OR
Shakespeare
books.

26. YOU’VE MADE IT!
Try experimenting with the different types of searches. You
should now be ready to help our patrons use the OPAC
themselves, which will help them search more effectively
for items in our collection.
Congratulations!