Advanced Search - Searching Module

This is the fifth section of the searching module of the Alma Overviews course. The video is at the top of the page, followed by the script.

In this video, you'll review:

Up until this point, we’ve dealt with a very robust basic search that’s available here in Alma. However, there are also advanced searches, and as everywhere else, advanced searches are powerhouses.

Using Advanced Search

To do an Advanced Search:

First, choose the search type you want, and then click on the word Advanced off to the right. This will expand the persistent search bar into the advanced search box, with the search type now at the top.

Note that not all searches have Advanced Search options: For instance, Invoices and Vendors just have Basic Search because there are really only a few fields you can search on.

Again, as with most advanced searches, you construct the search using rows of criteria. For each row, do the following:

First, choose the field you want to search on, or the criteria. Alma may provide a single list or offer focus areas that relate to the kind of search you want to do.

Remember that we’ve chosen the Physical Titles search type.
One of the ways that the search in Alma is very powerful for materials searches is that you can use criteria from the Title-level record, Holdings-level record, or Physical Items-level records for any materials search. In this case, you can search by the Subject (which is at the Title-level), by Holdings (which is at the Holdings level), and by a due back date (which is at the item-level).
Also, as with a basic search, recently-used options will appear at the top.

Once you’ve chosen your field, you would then choose the operator for that field, and this box will be context-dependent. The type of operator will change depending on the type of input you will need for your criteria.
Then, in the third box, choose or enter the value for the field. Some criteria are text entry, some offer a drop-down menu to select from, and many dates-related criteria will offer a calendar to pick from. We’ll see more of these in our examples at the end of this sequence.

Another use of the advanced search is that it offers every single possible field as a search criteria, instead of the more limited search criteria available in the basic search.

If I wanted to add a second row, I could use the plus sign to just add a row and then choose my next criteria.

If I want to duplicate a row and then just change the search term, I can use the “two pieces of paper” icon and that will give me again Subjects Contains keywords and now I can add in art.

If I need to delete a row, I can click on the X to the right of it, and I can clear the entire form at any time by clicking on Clear Form.

Once your search query is set, click on Search or hit the Enter key. You’ll be presented with your list of search results and you can use filters, sort, and use all of the other features same as with a basic search.

An Advanced Search Example, Demonstrating Different Criteria

Let’s do one more example of an advanced search. I will go ahead and clear my form, and I’m going to choose an advanced search to answer the question: What materials are available on the subject of democracy in Spanish at the Widener Library?

In this case, I want actual items on the shelf, so I will choose Physical Items as my search type.
For the first row:

I’m going to go ahead and choose Subjects (LC). You’ll see that it’s not here in my convenient recently-used listing, so I could either try and guess where it will be or I can start typing. As I start typing in that field, everything that matches what I type will come up. So, in this case, it will remind me that all of the subject-related information is held at the title-level record, and it gives me Subjects (Library of Congress) as a choice.
Now, I choose my operator of Contains Keywords
And I’m going to type in the word democracy.

For the second row, I add a row:

I want to choose Permanent Physical Location, which is in the Holdings record criteria list. If I do click in, I do see it here in my recently-used and it reminds me that it’s in the Holdings area, so I can just choose it.
I’m going to choose Equals.
And now, when I click into the list, it presents me with a drop-down of all of the possible list of locations here at Harvard.

You can choose more than one location in this same row, you don't need to add a separate row for each location.
And, the same as with the criteria themselves, you can start typing a word in the location name to find it more quickly. So, I would type in Widener and again, everything that includes the word “Widener” would appear.
So now, I scroll down and I could go all the way down to specific collection levels, or I could choose to select all collections at Widener Library. I’ll choose Select All.
I could immediately add in another library, let’s say Lamont. Again, make sure you’re choosing from the right library – I want Lamont Library, Select All.
If I wanted to, I could now remove this criteria as well, using the X.

For the third row of my search, I will add the row:

This time, I want to choose Language, so I’ll go looking for it, language in the title-level record.
(Choose Equals as the operator)
And here we will get another drop-down list of all of the possible languages available in the Harvard Library collections. So again, I’ll start typing and I’ll get Spanish.

You do need to select from the list – you can’t just click off here. You have to actively choose Spanish or hit Enter.
For Language, you can only have one language per row. If you wanted to search in multiple languages, you can add that but be careful of how the Boolean operators will connect them. We have our Boolean operators over here on the right and if we use AND, it would find Spanish AND Portuguese, so the single item would have to be in both languages.

For my fourth row:

I’m going to choose Publication Year because I want more recent materials. It’s not here, so I’m going to actually this time go ahead and look in the Title information. So, all I did was click on the title bar to expand that list and scroll down until I find Publication Year.
As we saw earlier, Publication Year has different kinds of operators. I want greater than or equal to...
And I’ll go with the year 2000 to get things in the last 18 years.

Now, I’ve entered all of my criteria – I can go ahead and hit Search.

In the search results list, I most want to point out how at the top of the page – a fair number of books, 1646 – and right below that it gives me the construction of the query in Boolean logic. This will teach you more about how Alma uses logic in advanced searches, so that you can construct effective queries more quickly.