Limiting a Search

Where appropriate for the currently selected function, such as Catalog, you can restrict the number of records that will be retrieved by applying limits before launching a search. Depending on your system's configuration, parameters that might be available for pre-search limiting include:

year of publication
publisher
words in the title
author
subject fields
location
language
material type
bibliographic level
available items

To limit a search by any of these parameters, the field must be included in the search index. To add or remove one of these parameters from the search index, contact Innovative.

NOTES

To view publisher information, you must limit by PUBLISHER. Because the PUBLISHER field includes information that can skew a search, for example city names, this parameter is indexed separately. If your library chooses, this parameter can be added to the general index.
Contact Innovative to change the list of item STATUS codes that should be considered as affecting item availability.

To limit a local search:

Choose Tools | Search | Browse.
Choose an index from the drop-down menu.
Enter the search criteria in the text box. Note that you do not need to enter the index tag in the box.
Choose Tools | Limit. A Limit dialog box appears.

In the Limit dialog box, specify the criteria by which to limit the search:

Limit Criteria	Enter:
YEAR of publication	The four digit year(s) by which to limit the search. The first text box specifies the Published in or after year and the second text box specifies the Published in or before year. To limit the search to a single year, you do not need to use the second text box.
PUBLISHER WORDS in the title WORDS in the author WORDS in the subject	The text by which to limit the search.
Other limiting criteria	Use the drop-down lists to specify the fixed-length fields by which to limit the search.

You can specify multiple criteria to limit your search. Use the '+' and '-' buttons to add or remove criteria.

Choose Clear to remove all limiting criteria.

Choose No Limit to disregard the specified criteria in the current search, but them for use in subsequent searches within this session.

If you have customized your function keys to use macros, you can press the function key or function key combination to activate the macro in the limit dialog. For more information on customizing macros see Macros Settings.

When you have specified all of the desired limiting criteria, choose Apply. The Limit dialog box closes and Sierra initiates your search.

Note that the word LIMITED appears in the status bar of the browse window, indicating that your search was limited.

Limiting All Searches in the Current Session

In the Limit dialog box, select the Apply limit to all searches check box. This applies the limit criteria you have chosen to all searches in the current session.

Limiting a Search Already Performed

If you have performed a search and retrieved a set of records, you can limit the results by choosing limiting criteria. Sierra offers two methods for limiting search results:

The Limit Tool
Facets

Facets

Facets enable you to refine your search by limiting the results according to selected criteria. Most facets have the following features:

The number of corresponding resources in the current result set appears to the right of each facet value.
Choose More >, when available, to see more values for a facet type.
Click a facet value to refine the search results list to just those materials that match the value.
Remove an applied facet from your search by clicking the 'X' icon that appears next to its name.

For more information, see Facets.