The Library Catalogue covers published material, including books, pamphlets, sheet music and commercially released recordings. For unpublished material, search the Archives Catalogues.
To find the Library Catalogue, from the main Catalogues and Indexes home page select Library Catalogue in the top menu, or the relevant box below:
Keyword (default) search
- Enter a word or multiple words in the search box to the left of the search icon. Use only the main terms of your query – words such as: the, and, is, was, an are ignored.
- The more words entered in the search box, the fewer results will be returned.
- Keyword searches look for all the terms, anywhere in a record, in any order, and may return unexpected results.
- Use an asterisk as a wildcard symbol to broaden a search by including words that begin with the same letters. Eg. danc* will return dance, dances, dancer, dancers, dancing, danced.
- Use the pull-down menu on the left (Author, Title, etc.) to limit the search to a particular type of information.
Once a search has been performed, results may be further refined by using the terms shown in the left-hand column:
Advanced search
The advanced search form allows filtering by item type, date, language, format, location, etc., the sorting of results, and the use of Boolean operators.
Use any combination of search fields and filters, none are mandatory, as long as at least one field or filter is used:
Once a search has been performed, results may be further refined by using the terms shown in the left-hand column:
Authority files link information together despite variations in spelling, nicknames, abbreviations, etc., and also disambiguate between similar terms.
The authority files most used in the VWML are Corporate names (musical groups, societies, clubs, festivals, etc.), Personal names (people), and Topical terms (Subject, or what the item is about).
Authority searches point to the correct (in bold) version of the term to use in searching the catalogue, eg. for personal names:
Lloyd, A. L.
used for/see from:
Lloyd, Albert Lancaster
Lloyd, Bert
The far right column in the authority search result will list the number of records that have this term. Clicking on the number will bring up these records:
Note
A few catalogue records have links to digital contents, online publications, etc. but generally, this is a catalogue of physical items in the library, or in remote storage.
Items in storage will need to be requested from a member of staff.
Items in offsite storage must be requested 3-4 days in advance: email [email protected] or phone: +44 (0)20 7485 2206 ext. 233
For information on the scope and content of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library see Our collections
