Field searching

The records that many search tools search in are made up of fields containing specific pieces of information. The most common fields include: author, title, abstract and subject. 

Field searching is usually carried out in the advanced search feature of a search tool. It can be a useful way of finding work by a specific author or narrowing down your search to find the most relevant results.

A basic search or an advanced search where a specific field is not chosen usually runs a keyword search in all fields. If a keyword search returns too many results, a field search may return a more manageable number.

Example: this advanced search for "animal cloning" in any field returned 447 results

Example: this advanced search for "animal cloning" in the title field returned 135 results