Sainte-Thérèse-d'Avila. Maître-verrier: Megnen-Cesbron (Paris). Photo by GO69. CC-ASA-3.0-U. Wikimedia Commons
Search the Portal Yourself
Narrow a Pre-Set Search
When you run some of the pre-set searches on the previous page, you may get too many items to sort through. You can narrow these searches easily. (You can narrow any Advanced Search in this way.)
On the search result page, click the "Edit this advanced search" link in the upper left of the screen.
Then click the "Add Search Field" link that appears under the search box.
When the search box has been added, type in another search term to add to the search in order to narrow it. Then click Find to run the search.
Search the Portal from Scratch
The most efficient way to search the Catholic Portal for any topic is to use the Advanced Search interface. To do so, click on the "Advanced" link in the box at the top of this page.
Find All Materials About an Order
Let's say you want to find all books in the Catholic Portal about an order for which there are no pre-set search links on the previous page, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Once on the Advanced Search screen, type the name of the order in the first search box and change the menu following the search box to "Subject." This will ensure that the search engine finds all materials where that order is the subject of each item in the result. Click Find to run the search. (If you get no hits this way, change the menu following the search box to "Keyword" and re-run the search.)
Find Items on an Order in a Specific Locale
To find all items about an order in a specific locale, start as in the search directly above, but in the second search box add the name of the area you are interested in. Change the menu following the second search box to "Subject." Click Find to run the search.
Find Items By or About a Founder
To find items by the founder of an order for which there are no pre-set searches on the previous page, on the Advanced Search screen, type the name of the person in the first search box and change the menu following it to "Author." Then run the search. This search will bring up all items written by that person.
To find all items about a founder, type their name in the search box and change the menu following to "Subject."
Format Menu
Books are not the only times types of materials cataloged in the Catholic Portal. To see different kinds of items on a topic you are interested in, when you have run a search, go to the "Format" menu on the right side of the screen. Here you will see the different formats of materials you have retrieved in that search. Click on the format you are interested in to see only that type of material.
