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Searching the Collection

Searching the Collection

Navigating the Search Bar on the Main Page

You can access the search bar from every page of the website and digital library. Expand the search bar by clicking on the Search link in the site header. There are two basic options to begin your search: 

Search the Website

Search through the informational pages on the HathiTrust website using keywords. This does not include the content that you find in the digital library collection.

The search bar with

Search the Digital Library Collection

When searching the digital library collection, you can search through the text of all volumes in the digital library, including book information such as Title or Author. To do so, select Full Text & All Fields. Search results will list individual volumes within journals, so there will be more results. Using this type of search also allows you to add your results to a personal collection.

The search bar with

Search through the Catalog

  • Narrow your search to only book information, such as Title, Publisher, and Author, by choosing All Fields indicated in the dropdown menu options. Search results will list journals but not individual volumes within each journal, so there will be fewer results.

  • Using this search does not allow you to add your results to a personal collection.

The search bar with All Fields selected from the second drop-down menu

  • Use other specific fields in the dropdown menu when you know the exact Title, Publisher, Author, or other book information. Using this search also allows you to sort the results by what you select in the drop-down menu.

The search bar with Title selected from the second drop-down menu

Search Tips

Boolean Searching 

Use AND and OR (capitalized) between words to combine them with Boolean logic: (heart OR cardiac) AND surgery will find works about heart surgery or cardiac surgery. 

Excluding terms from Full Text & All Fields search

When searching in Full Text & All Fields, use a minus (-) to remove words from the result, e.g., heart  -cardiac will find items containing the word heart that do not include the word cardiac. The word NOT is not available as a Boolean search term. 

Phrase Searching

Use quotes to search an exact phrase: e.g., "occult fiction."

Wildcards

Use * or ? to search for alternate forms of a word. Use * to represent several characters, and ? for a single character: e.g., optim* will find optimal, optimize or optimum; wom?n will find woman and women. Wildcard search is not available in Full Text & All Fields search.

Browse the collection

If you would simply like to browse without entering a search term, you can enter * by itself.

Search by ISBN, ISSN, OCLC, etc.

You can select “ISBN, ISSN, OCLC, etc.” from the search bar’s drop-down menu to search for multiple types of identifiers. The following fields are included in this search: 

Search Results Screen

By default, your search results will include all the materials that are available to you to access online — known as “Full View” — limited by the search terms that you apply. These titles are available for you to access because they are in the public domain or licensed as open access. Once you reach the search results page, you can also include materials that are restricted by copyright in your search results by specifying “All Items” under "Item Viewability.”

The

Sorting Your Search Results

To sort your search results, please select one of the fields from the dropdown menu when searching: for example, title, author, etc. If you search using “Full-Text & All Fields,” we don’t provide the sort capability because there are typically too many search results to make that feasible.

A screenshot of the different options to choose from in the search bar's second drop-down menu

Navigating the Advanced Search Page 

Using Advanced Search, you may select multiple fields for a combined search, enabling more detailed searching. Your options include Full Text & All Fields, All Fields, and other specific fields indicating book information. 

Advanced Search Tips

All of these words

Treats your search as a boolean AND expression: heart cardiac will match fields containing heart AND cardiac

Any of these words

Treats your search as a boolean OR expression: heart cardiac will match fields containing either heart or cardiac.

This exact phrase

Treats your search as a phrase expression: occult fiction will match fields containing the phrase "occult fiction".

Using wildcards Catalog Index

Use * or ? to search for alternate forms of a word. Use * to stand for several characters, and ? for a single character. For example, optim* will find optimal, optimize or optimum, and wom?n will find woman and women. Wildcard search is not available in Full Text & All Fields search.

Browse the collection

If you would simply like to browse without entering a search term, you can enter * by itself.

Use the Full Text Index

Check the Always use the Full Text Index option if you would like to do either of the following:

  • Display search results at the item level (include individual volumes within a journal, for example).

  • Add your search results to a personal collection. 

The Always Use the Full Text Index checkbox on the Advanced Search page

Search by ISBN, ISSN, OCLC, etc.

You can use “ISBN, ISSN, OCLC, etc.” to search for multiple types of identifiers. The following fields are included in this search: 

Search by contributor

You can limit search results to a specific “Original Location.” The “Original Location” specifies which HathiTrust member library contributed a digital item to the HathiTrust collection. All 60+ contributing libraries are included in the list on the Advanced Search page.

Original location menu on the Advanced Search page.png

This may be of particular interest to library workers at contributing libraries and others who may wish to search within the volumes of a single contributor.

  • By using this search option and selecting the “Always use the Full Text Index” checkbox, you can search within the digital items from that contributing library’s collection.

  • By unchecking the box and using one of the field options (Title, Author, Subject, ISBN/ISSN, Publisher, Series) you can search within the catalog records from that contributing library’s collection.

This new option is in addition to the existing “Original Location” search facet in the sidebar of a search results page. The sidebar search facet is limited in that it displays only the top 30 contributors and may be selected only after conducting your search.

Non-linguistic content, such as graphs, charts and illustrations, is not currently searchable.

You can search for materials printed in a non-Latin alphabet. We have searchable text for volumes in a variety of non-Western scripts including Russian, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean. If you are having trouble searching a volume, please let us know at support@hathitrust.org.

Search through Individual Collections

Search inside a featured, shared, or personal collection of materials that you or others have created.

  1. Create a personal collection of books that you would like to search within. You can also search within an existing Featured or Public collection.

  2. Search for keywords within your selected Collection by using the search bar just underneath the name of your personal or other Collection.

    The search bar at the top of your collection page

If you are searching for journals or serials with the Collection, please see our help article on How to Search for Journals or Serials in the Collection.

Search within a Book

The Search in This Text feature is available in the left sidebar when you open a book. Enter your search terms in the search bar and then click the magnifying glass icon to submit the search.

The Search in a Text search bar

We offer a number of features for searching within a book:

  • You can change the order in which search results are displayed: by page scan or by relevance.

  • You can toggle search term highlighting on the book pages as desired.

  • You can resize the sidebar by dragging the Close Sidebar icon to make the search results wider or narrower.

  • Search results can load in the sidebar so that you can explore the search results while viewing the book pages at the same time. If you want your search results to appear in a separate tab, check the “Open result in a new window” checkbox before submitting your search terms.

  • You can clear your search if you’re done with searching in the book, or you can just minimize that section in the sidebar by clicking on “Search in this Text.”