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Osterhout Free Library
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Contemporary Authors:
Contemporary Authors contains biographical and bibliographical data on modern authors- most from 1960 on, although there are some older authors included. (ex.: Edgar Allan Poe).
Author Search: Do an Author Search to look for records by author.
Here's how to search:
- Click on the entry box.
- Enter a name. (last name first- Example: Christie, Agatha).
- Click on Search.
To use other searches:
Subject Guide Search – to search by topic. Search the Subject Guide when what you want can be expressed as "show me articles about" a topic.
Here's how to search:
- Click on the entry box
- Enter one or more words - Example: Mystery
- Click on [Search]
Hint: It's usually best to search for only one or two words. If you enter more than one word, enter the most important word first, even if that looks backwards. Use one or more wildcards if you're unsure of spelling or want to search for variant forms of a word.
Title Search – to search by words in book titles.
Here's how to search:
If you're not sure of a spelling or want to search for alternate spellings or endings, use one or more wildcards in your search. You can also use logical operators to combine words in various ways. If your search succeeds, you'll see a list of references in which the words you entered occur in the title. |
You can leave in words such as the and a even though these are stop words and are not indexed. InfoTrac knows how to search as if stop words weren't there.
Advanced Search – to search for records using one or more indexes.
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Advanced Search presents you with a framework for building as simple or as complex a search expression as you want. You can search for as many as three terms (consisting of one or more words) from as many as three different indexes, and you can link the search terms with any of three logical operators.
You can search using the following indexes:
Author |
au |
Keyword |
ke |
Birthplace |
bp |
Nationality |
nt |
Birthyear |
by |
Subject |
su |
Deathplace |
dp |
Text Word |
tx |
Deathyear |
dy |
Work Title |
ti |
Ethnicity |
et |
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Wildcards
Sometimes you might want to find more than just exact matches to a search term. Wildcards let you substitute symbols for one or more letters. There are three wildcard operators:
| asterisk (*) | Stands for any number of characters Ex.:child* - children |
| question mark (?) | Stands for one character Ex.: relev?nce |
| exclamation point (!) | Stands for one or no character for sing. or pl. Ex: book! – books |
If you see a message about a search being invalid, you'll need to add at least one character before one of the wildcards.
Logical operators are And, Or, and Not. They allow you to find the result of the intersection of two search terms or result sets, the combination of two terms or result sets, or the exclusion of a term or result set from a search.
The History section will display the results of the search:
1. To see citations, select View.
2. To clear the history list, select Start over.
Note: Citations are all listed in order of best matches to the search terms.