Skip to Main Content

Searching the Library Catalog: Liimiting Search Results: Refining Your Search Results

Refining Your Search Results

If your list of results from a keyword or advanced search is too large you can refine your results by using the list of options on the left-hand side of the page.  Use these options wisely to narrow your search results down to a manageable and more targeted results list.


 RETAIN FILTERS (top left side menu)

If you check this box the limits you place in this section will be retained for future searches.



REFINE SEARCH MENU (left side menu)

Each time you select a limit the results list on the right will reformat itself accordingly.

  • GROUP THIS SEARCH (Default YES): Brings all editions of a work together.
  • REFINE THIS SEARCH (Default NO):  If YES, the system returns results from all indexes that might contain your search terms.
  • HELD BY LIBRARY:  Default is Worldwide, you may chose to limit just to the Minnesota region (MINITEX) or Luther Library only.

The following search limits indicate the number of results match that limit from your results list:

  • FORMAT:  You can expand this list and limit the results to very specific formats.
  • CONTENT TYPE:  Especially helpful when searching for articles by allowing you to limit by "Peer Reviewed" and/or "Open Access" for example.
  • PUBLICATION YEAR:  You can limit results to the last 5, 10, 25 years or to a specific date range.
  • AUTHOR/CREATOR:  Lists all the author names in the results list.
  • SUBJECT: Limit by any of the subject headings that appear in the results list.
  • DATABASES:  Choose to limit results to a specific database.
  • LANGUAGE: Limit by a specific language in your results.