Enter a derived search

Overview

A derived search uses a specific number of initial characters from words in a name and/or title. The "derived" segments of the words are separated by commas. The number and pattern of letters and commas tells the system which WorldCat index to search.

The four derived search formats include the following required number of initial letters and commas:

• Title (td:) 3,2,2,1
• Personal name (pd:) 4,3,1
• Corporate/conference name (cd:) =4,3,1
• Name/title (nd:) 4,4

   Note: Even if a derived search has fewer than the number of words in a derived search sequence, you must enter all required commas.

• Enter all letters available, even if a name or title segment does not contain the requisite number of letters.
  
  Example: To search for the title Roots in the Command Line, enter td:roo,,,

Guidelines

• Use the correct format for the type of derived search you want to do, whether you use the command line or a guided search (the system does not automatically format derived searches).
• In the command line, enter a derived search with or without an index label if it is the first or only search; otherwise you must use the index label (and punctuation).
• In a guided search, enter only one derived search per Search for box.

   Note: You can enter an index label and a colon preceding the derived search in the Search for box to override any selection in the index list.

• Omit initial articles (a, an, the, and non-English equivalents).
• Include articles found within titles. Include letters, numerals, and these characters:& $ * % @ £
• Exclude punctuation, diacritics, and these characters: - # / + =
• Use a circumflex (^) to narrow a search. For a name consisting of only two parts, enter a circumflex in the third segment.
  
  Example: To search for Harvey, Henry, enter harv,hen,^"
  
  Exception: The circumflex is invalid in a derived title search.
• If a personal name begins with Mc or Mac followed by an uppercase letter, enter m and omit c or ac.
  
  Example: To search for MacDonald, Marion B., enter mdon,mar,b 
• For Name/Title Derived searches:
  • If the surname in a Name/Title Derived search contains a prefix (e.g., de Cervantes), enter the first four letters of the first word, which in this case may be the prefix depending on how the name was entered into the record. 
  • If the first word in the name or title contains less than 4 letters, only the letters of the first word are searched.
    
    Examples: To search for Miguel de Cervantes and Don Quixote, it would depend on how the author's name was added to the record.
    • If the name was added as Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, the most common way it is represented, enter cerv,don.
    • If the name was added as De Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel, enter nd:de,don.
    • If the name was added as Saavedra, Miguel De Cervantes, enter nd:saav,don.
• When WorldCat derived and keyword search results include words with diacritics, the records may be sorted out of sequence with words that do not have diacritics, whether you use the client or the browser interface.

Stopwords

When constructing a Corporate/Conference Derived (cd:) search, omit the following stopwords from the first segment only. Also omit the stopwords when they appear at the beginning of a corporate/conference name in a Name/Title Derived (nd:). Include the stopwords when they are not the first element of a corporate/conference name.

Selected indexes and examples

The following table lists the four derived search indexes and gives examples and guidelines: