Search tips

Search tips

You can make a general search, using any of the information you have about a title, from the search box at the top left hand side of the screen. You are not required to select a category from the menu beneath the search box (ISBN, Author, Title), but it will probably help the accuracy of your results if you do so.

We also have an 'Advanced search' option, located below the search box in the top left-hand-side of the screen. Using this, you can narrow down a search by author, price, title, child's age, format (eg hardback, audio), or subject. For example, you could search for all business books costing less than £5. You don't need to select all criteria, just as many or as few as you wish.

The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is unique to each book, and the edition of that book. The ISBN has traditionally been made up of 10 numbers - inputting a number in this format should return just one result. Please keep in mind that new editions of a title will have new ISBNs, so checking on the author or title is also often worthwhile. The ISBN has changed to a 13 digit number in order to accommodate the number of titles being published, so don't be surprised if you start seeing numbers beginning with 97...

The book catalogue is immense, with literally millions of titles available. This means that some search results can be quite unwieldy, so the more specific you can be the better.