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Whether you are looking for a specific exhibition catalogue or want to compile a list of publications regarding a particular artist or topic, the Advanced Search page on our Web site is the tool that will serve you best. Below is a brief overview of this page. For more detailed instructions on how to effectively use the Advanced Search feature, click here.

Our online database features bibliographic records for more than 100,000 titles, including exhibition catalogues and other museum and gallery publications issued by institutions throughout the world, as well as art books published or distributed by American trade and university presses. Each record provides basic bibliographic information, and each title has been carefully catalogued (using our simplified cataloguing system and terms) to allow for targeted searches as well as general browsing.

At the top of the advanced search page are seven fields in which specific publication and/or exhibition-related information can be entered, such as title, author, publisher, first venue or ISBN. Use these fields for simple keyword searches, or put a phrase in "quotation marks" to find exact matches.

Text fields (including the ISBN field) also accept the asterisk (*) as a wildcard. Typing paint* in the Title field, for example, will call up all records for publications that have the following words in their title or title translation: paint, paints, painting, painter, painters, painted, etc.

The < and > operators can be used in fields that accept numerical values (Year of publication and Worldwide stock number), either by themselves (e.g.: >2009 to find publications published after 2009) or together to cover a range (e.g.: >2007 <2011 to find records with a year of publication of 2008, 2009 or 2010).

For a more general search based on subject matter, select a keyword from one or more of the menus labeled Region through Language of Publication. Use the Recent Arrivals menu to limit your search to titles announced in a recent printed list or newsletter.

By default, the Advanced Search results will include titles regardless of their in-stock status. To exclude titles that are out of print or out of stock indefinitely from the search results, uncheck the appropriate boxes towards the bottom of the page. The same can be done to include or exclude university press publications, trade publications or museum publications unrelated to exhibitions.

If you wish to review our Special Sale Items only, you may check that box towards the bottom of the page; you may also wish to specify other filters to restrict your search of our Special Sale Items to titles on specific topics, periods or media.

Use any field or combination of fields and filters to be as general or as specific as you please, but please note that the number of records that will be displayed is limited to 2000. If your search produces more than 2000 results, you may wish to specify more restrictive search criteria, or you may wish to do multiple and mutually exclusive searches that in aggregate will show you all of the results relative to your initial search (e.g., you might first search for titles published prior to a given year, and then search for titles published that year or later).