Lucy2 is the online catalog of items within the Lucy Scribner Library. You have several searching options available to you, including the ability to search only the Children's Literature Collection.

Choosing the Advanced Search option allows you to combine keyword terms and/or multiple search fields. You might be looking for a book on a theme or topic, with illustrations by a particular person. Using the Advanced Search, you can type in, for example, family in keyword anywhere, combined with Pinkney as a name.

If you were simply looking for books that deal with a particular theme or subject, but you wanted to limit your search to children's literature, you would set your search limits first: Click the "limits"  button: and limit to location – Children's Literature.

Click the button. Then execute your search as keyword anywhere (the default option) or change Search in to subject. This is a good way to limit a search that could retrieve far too many items - Animals as a subject, for example.

Another way to limit an Advanced Search is to add the term juvenile in a Search for box, and search that term in Subject.

This works because a very large percentage (but, perhaps, not 100%) of the books in the Children's Literature Collection have the words juvenile fiction or juvenile literature attached to the Library of Congress subject headings (see below.)

This book was one of those retrieved with the search African American as keywords and juvenile as part of the subject description (Search in: Subject.) To get the book, you would need to note that it is in the Biography collection, with the call (Dewey Decimal) number of 629.13092 Pla (the letters being the first three of the author's last name.)

Another thing to keep in mind is the way you combine your search terms. Lucy2 does not require that you put in connecting words - AND, OR, or quotation marks. You do, however, have the choice of all of these (AND), any of these (OR), or as a phrase (" ")

Results will be different for each search: African American - as a phrase, returns fewer results than African American - all of these. (In the search above, 92 as opposed to 120.) Also note that you do not have to capitalize words.

The Basic Search option is a good choice if you know the exact title of a book you are looking for, or if you want to know what we have by a particular author. You can also search by Library of Congress subject heading, or call number. In most cases, an illustrator can be searched as Author, even when s/he has not written the text of the book

For example, what books do we have that were written by Katherine Paterson? Type in her name – last name first – and highlight Author, click search. It shows you an index screen of authors’ names, with 27 titles listed next to Paterson, Katherine. Click on the number in list [1] or number of titles to see the individual listings.

Alternatively, try searching for Pinkney, Brian. This time the index screen displays a button next to the name. If you click on this button, it indicates the "official" heading for Brian Pinkney:

Clicking on the link, and then on the number of titles next to the heading, will retrieve the list of books illustrated by Brian Pinkney.

You can put limits on a Basic Search, but they can only be applied to title and journal title searches.

Return to the Children's Literature Collection
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Page maintained by: Linda Hofmann
Lucy Scribner Library, Skidmore College
Last updated: October 22, 2007 (EP)