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Help and tips

Use the search box to search! Enter your query as free text, or use the filters suggested in the search box. Click the examples further down on this page to see how filters and search operators can be used in practice.

Filters

A search can be narrowed down by adding different search filters. The easiest way is to choose from the suggestions that appear when the search box is active, or from the list in the left panel. Filters can also be added manually by typing one of the allowed keywords followed by a colon (:). Examples of keywords include Author/Contributor, Title, Language etc.

In the filter you then choose a value from the suggestions, such as a specific author, book title, or language. It is also possible to enter the filter value as free text.

Phrase search

If you want to search more precisely, you can put quotation marks ("") around the search phrase. A search query without quotation marks matches more documents, since variations of the search phrase are also included (so-called soft matching).

  • Example: "Désert" (French for desert) between quotation marks excludes results for the English word Desert.
  • Example: "Gift" returns results that include Tove Ditlevsen’s novel Gift but not August Strindberg’s Giftas.
  • Example: "His dark materials" returns only results containing that specific word order (in this case the title of both a novel series and a TV series).

Truncation

Use an asterisk (*) to include multiple endings of a search term.

  • Example: kulturarv* returns results containing the words kulturarv, kulturarvet, and kulturarvsinstitutioner.

Wildcards

To search for words with variable spelling, you can use a question mark (?) as a wildcard.

  • Example: organi?ation returns results for both organisation and organization (British and American spelling).

Masking the final letter of a word is achieved with \?.

Operators

Search filters and words or phrases in free text can be combined with the operators AND,OR and NOT. Operators must be written in uppercase. If no operator is specified between words or filters, an implicit AND is applied.

You can also use the Swedish equivalents OCH,ELLER and INTE.

NOT — exclude search terms or filters

With NOT you can exclude search terms, filters, or phrases from the result set.

NOT

OR — broaden the search

Add OR between search terms or filters to get more results. The results will then contain one or more of the specified search terms.

OR

AND — all search terms or filters must be included

AND rarely needs to be written explicitly; it is applied automatically if no other operator is specified.

AND

Grouping

Use parentheses () to construct more complex search queries that combine operators, search filters, and search phrases.

Relevance and ranking of search results

Search results are automatically ranked according to certain criteria. For example, results where the search phrase appears in the title or in the contributor names (authors, illustrators, translators, etc.) will appear higher in the results list.

Search APIs

See our API-documentation for information about more specialized search. Here you can also read about how to make requests to create integrations with other systems.

Search tips

Copying searches

It’s easy to copy searches (including filters) by selecting the contents of the search box and copying it as if it were plain text.

Empty filters — required a specific property to be present

An empty filter can be used to require that the search results contain the property described by the filter (regardless of its value).

Exact or similar hits

“When you search for a person associated with multiple works, both exact and similar matches are shown in the results list. This means you may also see results where the person’s name is spelled the same way but has not yet been linked in the catalog. This is because not all content in the catalog is fully linked. If you only want to see titles where the person is correctly and actively linked, click the link ‘Only show exact matches for …’, which appears below the number of results.”

Favourite libraries

You can save one or more libraries as favorites to quickly limit your searches to these. You can do this either by clicking on “My Pages” at the top of the page or on the pencil icon next to the filter “Limit to favourite libraries” on the search results page. On My Pages, search for the desired libraries and click “add”. To remove libraries from your favorites, click “remove” under each respective library. Information about your favorite libraries is stored locally in your web browser in a cookie file.

References

Each edition has a “Cite” button that makes it easy to create references in a number of different formats. When you click the button, a window opens where you can choose between reference formats and copy the completed reference as text. There is also support for common browser plugins, allowing you to export the reference directly to your reference management tool.

“Available online”

Material that contain links to content available online has an “Available Online” button. This lists all the links available via libraries or other sources. Much of this material is also freely accessible.