Hi Dear Library Official, You all do a great job running the place. I have a suggestion, which is very simple. I access the library's web page by typing in . On the home page, you have an immediate (and convenient) search field for the catalog, which only contains two criteria for narrowing one's search: "words anywhere" and "title begins with. . ." Why not include the very common-sense option of 'Author's name'? Obviously, you could enter the author and select "words anywhere," but this preferentially seems to generate books about the author or anthologies, more than works by the author. I just ran a search for "Foote, Shelby," and he wasn't hit upon as the author until the thirteenth entry; that's not so bad, but there's no reason to have to sort through biographical and critical literature when one only wants to see the primary documents. Cheers, Thanks for reading.
From: an undergraduate student
Jimmy Ghaphery, Head of Library Information Systems, replies...
Thank you for taking the time to write us about the library search box. We continue to make changes, but seek to balance how many features to include without making it overwhelming. In addition to author, there are a number of other searches that are only available by going directly to http://catalog.library.vcu.edu.
In the near future we expect to bring even better library search tools to the VCU Community. In particular we are looking at a single search box that brings back results sorted by relevance and grouped in facets. In this type of environment it should be easier to hone in on works by an author much more quickly, and still get the benefits of seeing the other biographical and critical sources. Thanks again.