Tutt Library

Title / Author searches in TIGER

When you know what you are looking for

Title and author searches are similar in that you usually have a pretty good idea of what you are looking for when you do one. Either you have a particular title in mind and want to know if it is in the library, or you have a particular author in mind and want to see if we have his or her books. If you don’t have a specific author or title in mind, you might be better off with a word or subject search.

In general

• For authors and titles, capitalization doesn’t count, but spelling does.
  • Example: searching for title Desert Solitaire or desert solitaire or even deSeRT sOliTairE all get the same result.
  • Example: but dessert solitaire is something else entirely.

Searching by title

• Don’t start a title with “the,” “a,” “an,” or their equivalents in other languages.
  • Example: for “A Farewell to Arms” you would type farewell to arms
  • Example: for “Les Miserables” you would type miserables
• Within the title, however, you can’t leave out or abbreviate any words.
  • Example: prayer owen meany won’t work; try prayer for owen meany
• You can just type the first few words of the title. If many books start with those words, you’ll get a list of all of them in alphabetical order.
  • Example: you could do a title search on the entire title I love myself when I am laughing and then again when I am looking mean and impressive: a Zora Neale Hurston reader. Or you could just go with I love myself and get the same results.
  • Example: if the first few words of the title you want are the start of many, many titles, though, you’ll want to add a few words to your search: proceedings of the probably isn’t a very good search, as it returns 500+ results.
• You will find more than just the titles of books. You can search TIGER by title for videos, music, journals, and everything else we have cataloged in TIGER.

Searching by author

• Search for authors with their last name first (or you can put in only a last name). If there is only one author with that name, you’ll see a list of the books by that author. If there are multiple authors with that name, you’ll see a list of authors that you can choose from.
  • Example: author = ondaatje (Michael Ondaatje is the only Ondaatje in the catalog, so a list of his books comes up)
  • Example: If your author’s name is Smith, you will have to be more specific than author = smith. TIGER knows over 2,000 authors named Smith.
• Some authors, particularly ones whose names have been transliterated from another alphabet, have multiple spellings of their names. TIGER should help you find the spelling used in the catalog, and link you to it.
  • Example: “Dostoevski, F,” “Dostoevskii, F. M.,” “Dostoevskij, Fedor,” “Dostoevsky, Fedor,” “Dostogephsk¯e, Th.,” “Dostogiephsky, Phiontor Micha¯elovits,” “Dostoïevsky, Fédor,” “Dostojewski, Teodor” and “Dostoyevski, Fyodor Mikhailovits” (among many others) are all the same guy, and all link to the same author record: Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881.