The library catalog only looks for the words you enter in a few places --book title, author's name, publisher, and official subjects assigned to the book. Using broad, general search terms is usually better than being too specific.
- Put the word AND between search terms:
"color purple" AND criticism
Alice Walker AND criticism
"community college" AND success
"community college" AND outcomes
college degree AND cost
college degree AND value
- Use an asterisk (*) to find variations of a word. Crit* would find anything referring to critical, criticize, criticism, etc.
O'Brien AND crit*
To specify ebooks only in your results, select the "Full Text Online" filter.