Within Library Search, the Browse Search feature allows you to expand your search in a similar way by displaying books and ebooks related to a subject, author, or a title of interest. We can browse items in the library catalogue with this tool using several several different criteria to sort our results.
Note that this search tool will only search for books and ebooks in the UVic Library catalogue. If you are interested in results including journal articles, books, and other resources, or results outside of the library catalogue, use the Advanced Search tool as described in this LibGuide to search for authors or subjects.
To access the Browse Search tool, click 'Browse Search' above the search bar from the Library Search homepage.
Clicking the dropdown menu to the left of the search bar will allow us select one of several options for our browse search. This guide will show you how to browse search by author, subject, and Library of Congress call number.
Shelf browsing is a way to locate books on similar topics. If you locate a book in person, the items surrounding it on the shelf are often relevant studies on the same topic matter as the particular item you are looking for. A quick scan across the shelf can be an effective way to find relevant sources that may not have appeared in your search results.
Using Library Search, 'Browse search' using the Library of Congress call numbers will allow us to browse items in the library's collections in the order in which they appear on library shelves, much as we would when visiting the library in person.
Unlike browsing the real-world library shelves, the online shelf browse feature will display both e-books and paper books available in the collections.
The first step is to locate the book which we would like to find materials similar to. Check the item's detailed record in the catalogue, and locate its Library of Congress call number. Note this code.
Next, click 'Browse Search' above the search bar from the Library Search homepage. Select 'Browse by Library of Congress call numbers' and enter the Library of Congress call number into the search bar. Click 'Search'.
You will now see displayed a list of books and e-books available in the library catalogue, starting from the call number you entered in the search bar.
You can navigate backwards and forwards by clicking on the arrows at the bottom right hand side of the page.
This tool will allow you to browse through all of the works in the catalogue by a specific author. This option is selected by default after you navigate to the 'Browse Search' page.
To use this browsing search tool, enter an author's name in the search bar using the format 'last name, first name'. Hit search to display your results.
Clicking on an author's name will lead to a list of the author's works in the library catalogue.
You can navigate backwards and forwards by clicking on the up and down arrows at the bottom right hand side of the page.
This tool lets us search for appropriate subject headings which might describe books, articles, and other resources we might be interested in.
Selecting 'Subject' from the 'Browse by' dropdown menu enables us to search for subject headings by keyword.
After entering our desired keyword and clicking 'Search', we can see a list of relevant general and specific subject headings.
You can navigate backwards and forwards in the link of subject headings by clicking on the arrows at the bottom right hand side of the page.
Clicking on any given subject heading in the results page will lead us to a list of works on that subject in the library collections. The screenshot below illustrates results related to the subject 'potatoes'.
Note that if your subject is a person, the subject listing for their name will be in a 'last name, first name' format. Instead of searching for 'elvis presley', for instance, we will have better luck searching for 'presley, elvis'.
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