Looking for Lost, Searching for AV

Including performer names in your searches for AV materials is an easy trick to narrow your results, especially in the ILL program, whose searching does not include format or date limits found elsewhere in the NHU-PAC.

A recent request on the NHAIS-ILL list asked for help locating a TV series on DVD, Lost: The Complete First Season: “I have tried a 100 ways to find it on NHUPAC...saw it once...can't find it again...even on advanced search!” With hundreds of works including the word in the title, Lost is a challenge to find. The "Complete...Season" part of the title is cataloged in subfield 245n, which is not indexed in our system so including those words won’t help your search. [Update: NHU-PAC indexing was changed in 2011 so this subfield is now searchable.]

Here's one way to find this particular title in NHU-PAC's ILL program: go to the ILL program's Advanced Searching page and search for

Title contains Lost
and Author contains Naveen Andrews

Performers are indexed in the same subfields as authors and in this case you could use Jorge Garcia or Matthew Fox or the names of several other actors featured in the show. Using Matthew Fox instead of Naveen Andrews, however, will bring up a few extra hits such as The Lost World with James Fox and Matthew Rhys or Egypt: Rediscovering a Lost World with Laurence Fox and Matthew Kelly.

Remembering that performers are indexed the same as authors can be handy in narrowing your searches for AV materials. Why wade through hundreds of hits for Pride and Prejudice when you're after the recent movie with Keira Knightley or the MGM version with Laurence Olivier and could have searched those names as authors in combination with the title?

Anytime you're having trouble finding things in the NHU-PAC, remember that the NHAIS Help Desk can provide assistance at nhu-pac@dcr.nh.gov or 271-2141.