Jim Fruchterman and the gang at Bookshare have just released a really cool feature that I know you’ll want to check out this weekend. They have just added a powerful new search engine that lets Bookshare’s users search the full text of all books in the library’s collection. I have wanted this for ages!

Until this week, Bookshare members had to no at least part of a title or author’s name to find a book. There was no ability to search for books by subject, other than browsing the broad, cumbersome category lists. It was somewhat like searching for a needle in a small but dense haystack.

Now you can search for keywords and find all books containing those words. Want to read fiction set in a castle in Cornwall? Now you can do a search to find what you’re after. Want to read about aliens from Mars? You can find those too, hopefully not in the castle in Cornwall though.

This new search engine makes me feel like a kid in a candy store. I’m finding so many books that I didn’t know Bookshare had. I could have read them years ago if I’d known they were there. Needless to say, I’m enjoying hunting for previously hidden treasures and putting them on my Book Port.

I have heard that some members are having trouble with the new Bookshare search engine. Maybe this will help to make things clearer. I know it will take some getting used to. I think you’ll find some hidden gold nuggets once you know how to make the system work for you.

Bookshare developers have given us more power, and they haven’t taken anything away. It has just changed a bit. Once you learn how it works, I think you’ll be hooked.

Bookshare has two types of searches now. They’re intended to work in different ways.

The first type of search, called Quick Search, the one that works in the search box at the top of most of the Bookshare pages, is a keyword or full text search. Bookshare calls it Quick Search because it’s so easy to use. It searches for the words you type into that box, searching through the title, author, ISBN, and the full text of the books. Think of this as searching through an entire library archive for something you want.

This search has some similarities to Google. If multiple words are entered, they are treated as a phrase. Entering more words will result in more exclusive and specific results. So if you search for the word “king”, Bookshare will return matches for “Alan King”, “Stephen King”, “king snakes”, “The King and I”, etc. Searching for Stephen king will only return results where the words Stephen King are part of the author’s name, or where the words Stephen king appear somewhere in the text. With this search, you might find a sentence that says, “Stephen wouldn’t rest until he became king.”

Not what you wanted? For even better control, search for “Stephen King” using quotation marks to get an exact match. (see below.) Author searches will be matched as “First name Last name”. Partial word matches are not done, so “king” will not match words like “cooking” or “kingfisher”.

If the Bookshare search engine detects that the search term is a number, it will assume it’s an ISBN and try to match that. This is an easy way to find out if a book you’re viewing on Amazon is in the Bookshare collection.

If you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotation marks around your search phrase. Searching for “Harry Potter” will only find books where Harry Potter’s name appears. It won’t show things like Harold Potter, Harry B. Potter, or Harry Potts.

If you don’t know how to spell a word you want to search for, try using an asterisk, (also known as a star), as a wild card. You can use the “*” wildcard as many times as you like. Typing *ing will match words like king, string, ping, etc. If you don’t know how to spell Espresso, you could type *presso to find it. You would find any books that mention Espresso in the title, author, or full text of books.

Try it yourself. Play with this for awhile to see how the search box behaves when you use quotes and star wild cards. You can’t break anything, and it’s safe to experiment.

If you put the title of a book in quotes, like “Cover Letter Magic” you should see that book listed in one of the top five search results. If you don’t see that title on the first page of search results, it probably isn’t in the Bookshare collection. However, if you want to search for a specific title or author, you may prefer the second type of search.

The Advanced Search lets you target your search better. You can search specifically for titles, authors, ISBNs, or the full text of the book. You can narrow your search by book quality, category, or other criteria. If you bookmark this link, you can use it to quickly check to see if a book is in the Bookshare collection.

Finally, you may notice that the site looks a little different when you view search results or browse books. This is because Bookshare lets us see the title, author, synopsis, and an excerpt showing the context of your search words in context. The download links are below that. It means faster browsing for us since we don’t have to arrow past the download buttons, read the synopsis, and arrow back to download the book. It’s a small yet really helpful change. I really like it.

If you have any questions, please ask either in the comments or on Twitter. I’ll do my best to help you. If I don’t know the answer, we’ll figure it out together. This is a new feature, and we’re all learning to use it. During the week, there is also a Bookshare Twitter account you can follow and write to as well.

There may be bugs to be fixed. If so, Bookshare support needs to know. If you need help understanding how the new search works, let’s work it out together.