The Limit Results screen

Learn how to use the limit results screen to use database-specific limits to refine your search in FirstSearch.

Overview

The Limit Results screen provides database-specific limits to refine your current search. Select the limit-by-category heading or the plus [+] icon to see individual limiters. For some databases, when the results are above 10,000, only the limit option will be displayed without information on the number of records in your current results set.

Note: Availability of any database-specific limit will depend on the database selected.

Author and subject. Author and subject headings are assembled from the first 50 records of your current results set. Only the first 20 authors or subject headings are initially listed. To see additional authors or subjects, scroll to the bottom of the category and click Show Remaining Authors or Show Remaining Subjects. Each related author or subject heading is displayed with a percentage number indicating the frequency of its occurrence within the results subset. Use the items in these categories to limit your current search to a specific author or subject heading.

Other limits. Other limits may be displayed, followed by the number of times the limiter appears in your current results set. For example, in the year category, the limit displayed as '1997 2650' indicates that 2650 records in your current results set were published in the year 1997.

Imposting limits

Toimpose a single limit on your current search, click the linked limit.
To impose multiple limits, click the checkboxes in front of each limit, then click Search. FirstSearch will combine the limits using the Boolean OR operator, then add the original search statement using the Boolean AND operator.
To combine limits from different categories, expand each category, select limits using the checkboxes, then click Search. FirstSearch will combine the limits from the same category using the Boolean OR operator, combine limits from different categories using the Boolean AND operator, then add the original search statement using the Boolean AND operator.

The following table provides examples of single, multiple, and combined limits imposed on the sample search kw:dog. For more information on combining search terms using Boolean operators, see the help topic on 'Combining search terms' in the Related topics below.

click:	to limit your current search to:	resulting search string:
Any single limit	Records containing the selected limit, for example author=Bowser	au=Bowser AND kw:dog
Checkboxes for multiple items in a single category and the Search button	Records containing more than one limit from the same category, for example author=Bowser and author=Fido	(au=Bowser OR au=Fido) AND kw:dog
Checkboxes for multiple items in multiple categories and the Search button	Records containing more than one limit from more than one category, for example author=Bowser, author=Fido, year=1996, and year=1997	(au=Bowser OR au=Fido) AND (yr=1996 OR yr=1997) AND kw:dog

Click Clear to clear any previously selected items in the list. For per-search users, applying limits to your current results set will count as a search.