Enter the entire title or the first few words of the title. Omit initial articles in any language such as a, the, le, un, etc.

Example: Search for The Importance of Being Earnest as Importance of Being Earnest

Click Search and Quest will bring up a list of titles. The title you searched for will be at the top of the list if any of the libraries at BC own it. 

Click on the title in the list to see which libraries have it and to get the call number. Below, the Quest display shows that O'Neill Library Media Center carries this title at call number PN1997.2.S8 2007.

Enter author's last name or a portion of last name. For common names, include the first name or initial.

Example: Yeats, W

All records in Quest are assigned subject headings, standard terms that describe what the book, video, etc. is about.

Example: united states civil war

You can use subject searching to narrow a topic. You can also do a subject search by clicking on the subject heading of a record that you have found that you find helpful to find other items with the same subject.

Enter the word(s) or phrases that describe your topic. Quest will automatically add the connector AND between the terms.

Example: domestic violence will actually search for Domestic AND Violence

When performing a keyword search, you can use the Boolean Operators AND, OR, and NOT to connect your search terms and phrases.

AND will search only for records that have both terms.
Example: domestic AND violence

OR will search for records that have one term or the other.
Example: family OR domestic

NOT will search for records that have one term but not the other
Example: family NOT domestic

When using more than one Boolean operator in a search, use parentheses.
Example: (family OR domestic) AND violence

Note: Using Advanced Search will walk you through these operators.

Truncation symbols such as ? and * command Quest to look for variations or alternative spellings of a word.

Examples: alcohol? searches for alcoholic, alcohol, alcoholism
wom*n searches for woman or women