SIMPLE SEARCH
Searches across all fields or in one indexed field (author, title, etc.)
Enter your search term(s) and select Keyword, Browse, or Exact
Click Word or Phrase or press Enter to search across all fields in a record
Click on field name (author, title, etc.) to limit search to a specific field.
COMPLEX SEARCH
Searches across two or more fields that you select. For example, use Complex Search if you want to find a book with the title United States AND written by Gore Vidal.
Enter search terms and select the appropriate operators (AND, OR, XOR, NOT) from the pull-down menus to the right of each indexed field.
You can also limit a search according to language, item type, publication year, item format, or specific location within a library.
CALL NO. BROWSE
Locates items according to call number, a code that identifies the item's shelf position. This allows you to look at the records of surrounding items on the shelf with related subject matter.
To perform a call number browse:
1. Type the entire call number in the Call Number box. Include all spaces and letters.
For example, 822.09 B571E.
If you don't know the entire call number, type as much of it as you know. For example 822
2. Select a shelving scheme from the pull down menu. Shelving schemes include:
3. Select a library from the list:
Engr & Sci (Engineering and Science)
HIBD (Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation)
Hunt
Mellon
SEI (Software Engineering Institute)
Video
Do not choose HERE or CMU.
4. As an option, you can limit the call number browse according to item type, location, or detail.
5. Click the Browse Shelves button. The result is a list of items in call number order, with an author and title displayed for each item. To see items with call numbers in a lower range than the list displayed, click the Backward button. To see items with call numbers in a higher range, click the Forward button.
6. Click on the call number or the adjacent View button to view the full bibliographic record.
Keyword, Browse, or Exact?
From the Simple Search screen you can select Keyword, Browse, or Exact Search.
( From the Complex Search screen, all searches are automatically performed as Keyword Searches.)
The browse search results in an alphabetical or alphanumeric list of items that begin with or closely match what you typed. The closest match will always appear on line 1 of the Browse list. The number of results matching each heading is shown in brackets next to the heading. For example, browsing Botany Af in the subject index will retrieve a list of items beginning:
Click on an item/link to see a list of the results matching that heading.
Omit the initial article (a, an, the, le, la, die, etc.) when performing an exact search.
Include all other words, including words like “and” and “of”.
If you are searching for an author, type in the last name first. For example, Hemingway, Ernest.
If Cameo can't locate items with the exact terms you typed, Cameo automatically performs a browse search.
You can narrow your search by restricting it to a particular indexed field in a bibliographic record.
· Word or Phrase Search retrieves a list of items in which your terms are anywhere in the Author, Title, Periodical title, or Subject field.
For a Keyword search, Cameo searches all terms in any order across all fields. Type and between your search terms to search in more than one indexed field. For example, to find books with the terms photography and Hine across more than one field, type photography and Hine, then click Word or Phrase. The results include records with "photography" in the Subject field and "Hine" in the Title field.
For a Browse search, Cameo searches only the first term you enter.
For an Exact search, Cameo searches the exact terms you enter in the exact order you type them.
· Author Search retrieves a list of items written by or about the name you type. In a Keyword Search, the author's first and last name can be entered in any order.
To find only books written by an author, use a Browse or Exact Search and type the last name first. For example, Kennedy, John F.
To find books authored by an organization (for example, Bureau of the Census), Keyword or Browse searching is recommended unless you are sure of the exact name format as it appears in the library catalog.
· Title Search retrieves a list of items with your terms in the title. In a Keyword Search, the terms can be entered in any order.
In a Browse search, Cameo looks for titles that begin with your search terms in the order you’ve typed them. In an Exact Search, Cameo looks for titles that exactly match your search terms in the order you've typed them. Always omit the initial article, but otherwise begin with the first word of the title.
· Subject Search searches subject fields that contain terms assigned by librarians to describe an item. Topics, authors, personal names, agencies, geographic locations, or titles can be used as subjects.
A subject search retrieves a list of items according to Library of Congress Subject headings.
Browse Subject results in a list of items which are alphabetically close to your entry.
Exact Subject tries to find an exact match for your entry. If you type a word or phrase that does not match an exact Library of Congress heading in Cameo, Cameo browses the catalog.
Compare a Keyword, Browse, and Exact Subject search on the same term: Marketing. A Keyword Subject search finds all items whose subject contains that term, for example, Art - Marketing, Marketing Management, and Corporations - Nonprofit Marketing. A Browse Subject search retrieves a list of subject headings beginning with the term Marketing, including Marketing, Marketing Corporations Nonprofit, and Marketing Management. An Exact Subject Search retrieves only those items whose subject heading is the single term Marketing.
Series Search. Generally, a series is a group of multiple-volume items from one publisher. Search the Series indexed field as you would a title. Examples of series include: IEEE Press Understanding Science and Technology Series, Bach Research Series, Houghton Mifflin New Poetry Series, Harvard Books on Astronomy, and Time-Life Encyclopedia of Gardening.
Operators
Operators are terms like and, same, or, or not that define one search term in relation to another. They can help broaden or narrow your search. You can type operators in a search phrase to look for terms in the same field, or use the Complex Search button to perform a search across more than one field.
Boolean operators available in the drop-down menus in the Complex Search screen are:
· AND means that both (or all) terms must be present in the results. It narrows a search. AND is helpful when you are searching for a book with multiple authors. For example, to find an item written by Robert Lawler and Kathleen Carley, type Lawler and Carley or type Robert Lawler and Kathleen Carley in the Author field. You can perform a search combining two or more terms with and in the Simple Search screen.
Note: You must type and between your search terms in a Keyword search to search for these terms in more than one indexed field when you search Word or Phrase in a Simple Search or enter more than one term in the Word or Phrase box in a Complex Search. For example, in a Keyword Simple Search to find books with the terms Ireland and Wilde across more than one field, type Ireland and Wilde, then click Word or Phrase. The list of results includes records with Wilde in the Author field and Ireland in the Subject field.
· OR means that any of the terms must be present in the results. It broadens a search.
· NOT means that a term is excluded from the search. It narrows a search.
· XOR means that either one or the other search term must be present, but not both. It narrows a search.
Positional operators can also be used to find records in which search terms are located in close proximity to one another. SAME is the default operator for Cameo for multiple word searches.
To search for one of these terms as a word rather than as an operator, enclose it in quotes. For example, war "and" peace.
In a Complex Search, you can specify the relationship of the search term(s) you type in each box using the drop-down lists of operators located to the right of each box. Click on the small arrow to open the drop-down list beside the first box containing a search term. Choose the term that defines the relationship between the first search box and the next one in which you've entered a search term.
For example, to see a list of items written by or about Jack Kerouac other than On the Road:. First type Jack Kerouac in the AUTHOR search box, then click on the drop-down arrow next to that box. Choose NOT. Then type On the Road in the TITLE search box. Click the Search Catalog button. Cameo returns a list of works written by or about Jack Kerouac that do not contain "On the Road" in their titles.
Stopwords
Cameo ignores certain words when it searches the catalog. These words, called stopwords, are usually prepositions, articles, or conjunctions. For example, kill mockingbird retrieves the same results as to kill a mockingbird.
Some stopwords are: a, an, as, at, be, but, by, do, for, if, in, it, of, on, the, to.
If your search contains only stopwords, you may receive an error message: "Your search contains all stopwords." To prevent stopwords from being ignored, enclose the stopwords in quotation marks. For example, "to" catch "a" thief.
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You'll get the same results whether or not you include apostrophes in the search term. For example, O'leary retrieves the same results as Oleary.
Include hyphens when they are part of a word or phrase, for example, half-life or twentieth-century art.
Omit initial articles (a, an, them, le, la, die, etc.) in your search phrase.
? The question mark substitutes for a missing character anywhere in a search term. For example, typing wom?n will retrieve records containing women or woman.
$ The dollar sign truncates search terms. It can represent no character, a single character, or many characters. For example, typing market$ will retrieve records containing market, markets, marketing, and marketplace.
Use $ plus a number to limit the number of characters replaced. For example, typing market$2 will retrieve records containing market and markets but not marketing or marketplace.
Search Limits
You can limit a Simple Search to a particular Carnegie Mellon Library by selecting an individual library from the pull-down menu. If you want to limit a search according to language, item type, publication year, item format, or specific location within library, use Complex Search or Call No. Browse.