PittCat is the main searching tool for all of the materials owned by the University Library System (ULS), including articles, books, ebooks, journal articles, ejournals, audio and video, digital images, government documents, microfilm and movies.

Searching Techniques

Keyword Searching -You can search the catalog using keywords related to your topic. Here's a good exercise to help you generate keywords:

• Express your topic in a topic sentence:  "How is pollution in the water supply measured?"
• Generate keyword search terms by identifying the main ideas or concepts within the topic sentence: "How is pollution in the water supply measured?"  --> pollution, water supply, measured
• Expand your search terms by brainstorming related terms or synonyms that describe your main ideas:
  • Pollution; pollutants, contamination, contaminants
  • Water supply; water, drinking water, river, lake, stream, reservoir
  • Measured; analyzed, analysis, determination, detection, detected

Phrase Searching - PittCat allows for phrase searching with the use of “  “. For example, the search ""African economic development"  will find only results containing those two words next to each other in that order. Remember: Exact phrase searches can focus your results, but they can also miss some relevant results. Searching the phrase "African economic development" may not find "economic development" in Somalia or Nigeria.

Wildcard and Truncation – You can use wildcards (* and ?) symbols to search PittCat.

• polic*       will find    policy, policies, police but not political                                             
• analy*      will find    analyze, analyzed, analysis, analytical, analyte, analytics

Advanced Searching - Check the Advanced Search for more tips and techniques to enhance your search, including Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT). Note: Boolean Operators must be entered in all uppercase/capital letters.

• AND - Narrows and focuses the search results. The search economic and development finds only results containing both the terms
• OR - Broadens the search results. Searching economic or development  will find results containing the term economic or the term development or both terms in the same result.
• NOT - Excludes any result containing the term listed after the not.  The search development not  economic  will find results containing the term development but not containing the term economic. Use NOT cautiously since it excludes ALL mentions of the term in every context.