Search Tips

Our powerful context-sensitive search system helps you quickly list entries containing the book(s) you want to find. You can search for Titles, Authors, ISBN's — even search for information about what's inside a book. Each search entry takes you to a page where the book or information you typed was located. The higher the listing, the greater its relevancy.

How to Search

Type what you're looking for in the search box above.
Click on GO or press ENTER to start your search.

What to Type

This is a very forgiving search system. You can be quite specific, or very general, and still get meaningful results — even if you're not sure what books you want to find. You can search for specific books or topics. For example, entering a phrase such as Books on Investing presents a series of entries all relating to precisely what you typed. Don't be afraid to experiment!

ISBN

To locate a particular book by ISBN, simply type the 10-digit number. If you don't know the entire ISBN, type the first part followed by an asterisk (*) as a wild card character (see below).

Title or Author

To locate a particular book title or author, surround all or part of the text with double quotes. This excludes other (similar) results. For example, a search for History of Medieval Europe will retrieve many entries, since "History," "Medieval," and "Europe" are all common words. However, entering "History of Medieval Europe" (i.e. surrounded by double quotes) will take you only to entries containing that exact phrase.

Contents of a Book

You can search a book's description as well as its title, author, or ISBN. Simply type what you're looking for as concisely as possible. Remember that the more words you type, the fewer will be the results.

Case and Articles

Searches are case-insensitive. Typing fiction is the same as FICTION or Fiction. Additionally, it is not necessary to use articles (A, An, The) as they are generally ignored.

Any or All Words

You can specify whether the results should contain any or all of the words entered. For example: and All-Word search for Handicapped Children finds pages containing both of those words. An Any-Word search finds pages containing either word.

Wildcards

You can search for word variations by using an asterisk (*) as a wild card character. For example: Typing Christ* will also find Christian, Christmas and other variations.

Inclusions and Exclusions

You can specify that certain words should always be included or excluded by using the plus (+) and minus (-) symbols. For example: To search for all Painting excluding Picasso, type: Painting -Picasso. To search for Painting including Picasso, type Painting +Picasso

Search Tricks

You can combine two, three or more exact phrases in a single search to hone in on exactly what you want. For example, if you searched for "South Africa", you would find many matches. Similarly, if you searched for "Philosophy of Religion", you would find many books. However, if you typed: "Philosophy of Religion" +"South Africa" then you would find only pages containing those exact phrases.

To quickly locate an exact title, the fastest way is to type the basic title (omitting extraneous words) and select the Exact-Match option (or use double quotes as described above). For example, if you search for History of Florida Education you will receive many matches, but if you search for "History of Florida Education" you will see that exact title listed.

Topics

Although you can search for topics, these can also be handled directly through our extensive Browse System to jump immediately to a particular topic or concept. With many well-organized categories listed, you're certain to be able to quickly find your subject of interest. If not, please let us know and we'll help you locate that special book!