Help
with Acorn
Introduction
Use Acorn to identify the books, periodical titles (but
not individual articles), government documents, scores, sound recordings,
and other holdings of the nine libraries that comprise Vanderbilt's Jean
and Alexander Heard Library.
Acorn offers the ability to search throughtout the database
for a word or combination of words (keyword) as well as two options
for looking up items in alphabetical indexes of authors, titles, subject
headings and series (Begins with and Browse).
Keyword searching
In general, use keyword to search for concepts or
for specific items when you do not have complete title or author information.
Keyword searches may be entered on either the Quick
Search page or the Complex Search page.
Quick Search offers: use of Boolean and positional
operators, truncation and nesting of search phrases; the option to limit
searches to one field; the option to limit searches to the holdings of
one library.
Complex Search offers: a guided keyword search
form; options for limiting searches to a combination of fields; options
for limiting searches by publication year, language and library; options
for sorting results.
Browse and Begins With
Browse and Begins With searches must be entered
on the Quick Search page.
Use Browse and Begins With when you know
at least the beginning of the title, author, subject heading, or series
of the item you are searching for.
The differences between these two types of seaches are
slight. Begins With offers more specificity because it retrieves
only a finite set of matching headings. Browse offers more flexibility
because it allows infinite scrolling through the index you select.
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