CLIO Search Tips

The Catalog can be searched by keywords, title, author, subject, call number, location, etc.

Keyword Search

For a keyword, or “All Fields” search:

• Use "quotes" for a phrase
  • “emily bronte” will find results with the phrase “emily bronte” but not those that have “emily smith” or “charlotte bronte”
• To find variant endings of a word, use * for truncation.
  • child* finds childhood, children and child’s, as well as child
• However, don’t shorten the root word too much, or you will also find irrelevant results.
  • poli* finds politics and political, but it also finds police and polite.
• Natural language searching does not work well in CLIO, although it does work in Google and many other search engines.  In Google, you can write a sentence like “What are the effects of large amounts of television watching on young children’s social skills?” However, in CLIO the search will only find the exact words you entered, so it is necessary to break up your question into its main concepts (words or phrases) and put AND between them.
  • television AND “young child*” AND “social skill*”
• Find as many synonyms as you can for your main concepts.  Think of different ways that the concept might be expressed in articles you want to find.  Write the synonyms with OR between them.
  • “young child*” OR “early childhood” OR preschool OR “pre-school” OR toddler*
• When doing complex Boolean Keyword searches in CLIO, the terms have to be written on one line
  • (“gender role*” OR “sex role*”) AND (medieval OR “middle ages”)

Refining a Search

• You can refine your results using facets, or categories, on the left of the search results.
  • Format – to find items by physical format, e.g. book, microfilm, online
  • Publication Date
  • Author
  • Acquisition Date
  • Location
  • Language
  • Subject – to find items about a topic
  • Subject (Region) – to find items about a place
  • Subject (Era) – to find items about a time period
  • Subject (Genre) – to find items by content type, e.g. correspondence, personal narratives, fiction
  • Call Number
• Once selected, these will remain in place until they are removed. 
• After selecting a facet, you can change “Is” to “Is not” to eliminate that category of item from the results list.