Limiting a Search

You can limit searches by:

• Year
• Language
• Material Type
• Medium/Format
• Location
• Publication Status
• Place of Publication

Limiting a search is a valuable part of your search strategy. Instead of starting with very narrow search criteria--and possibly missing related items--you may want to start as broadly as possible, limiting the broad search in carefully designed steps.

Note: you cannot limit Subject, Author, or Call Number searches.

The search screens include a Quick Limit drop-down box, which allows you to add one of the most commonly-used limits to your search. For additional limits, or to set multiple limits, you need to go to the Search Limits screen. To do this before you do your search, click on the Set Limits before Searching button towards the bottom of a search screen. To do this after you have done a search, use the Narrow Search Results button on the results screen.

1. To limit your search by a year, type the year in the Year text box in the format YYYY. Then click the appropriate radio button for the year or year range that you want to find. For example, to find all texts published before 1850, type 1850 in the text box and then click the radio button to the left of the less than symbol (<). To limit between a range of years (1990-1999), type the beginning year (1990) in the Year box, click the radio button to the left of Range, and type the ending year (1999) in the Range box.

2. To limit your search by Language, Material Type, Medium/Format, Location, Publication Status, or Place of Publication, click on the appropriate drop-down list and select the limiting criteria.

3. You can add more than one limit. To add limits in different categories (for example, limit to English and HMD Collection), just select each one by clicking on it.

   To add more limits within the same category (for example, to limit to Dutch or German), select your first limit (Dutch) by clicking on it. Then find your second limit (German) in the list and select it by holding down the CTRL key while clicking on it. This will find things in Dutch or German.

Click the Set Limits button, and then type in your search (in a search screen) as usual. Click the Remove Limits button to clear the limits. Limits will stay in effect until you clear them or close your browser.