Make your search more efficient by following these simple guidelines.

General Search Tips

The search engine is not case-sensitive, so you can use all lowercase if you like or capitalize a word or two — it doesn't matter. Correct spelling, on the other hand, is essential because the search engine only returns exact matches of any word or name you enter. However, don't go overboard with special characters in spelling — the search engine does not recognize diacritical marks, such as accents.

Searching by Keyword

Enter one or more keywords into the search box with a space between each word. The search engine then lists results in which all your keywords appear somewhere in the title, author name, and/or description.

If you enter multiple keywords and would like to see all the listings that contain at least one of them, use OR. For example, if you enter design OR graphics, your search results will include all listings containing the words "design" or "graphics," but not necessarily both.

Searching by Title

Enter a word or phrase from the title. For example, to find the book Broadband Internet Access For Dummies, any part of the title such as "Internet Access" or "Broadband Internet" or even "Broadband Access" will work. However, the closer you get to the exact phrase, the closer to the top of your results list the title will be. "Broadband Web Access" will not get the desired results at all.

Searching by Author

Type in the first name (if you know it) and last name of the author, with no comma between them. For example, wallace wang. This can provide more specific results than searching for wang, wallace, which will return titles whose author names contain either "wallace" or "wang."

Searching by ISBN

The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is a 10-digit or 13-digit number that uniquely identifies a given book title. You can usually find the ISBN on the back cover of a book, above the price code. When you type an ISBN in the search box, make sure that it contains 10 or 13 characters, with no spaces or special characters except for hyphens. Hyphens are acceptable, but not required.