Searches via library() are done using electronic mail. That is, your search request is sent to a remote computer which does the search and mails back the results. Usually you should have results within 20 minutes or less. There are two search stategies available through library(). Note that these are search languages of the slimmer system - see slimmer documentation for more details than given below. The main method is to enter a search string which library handles as follows: a) It is broken up into alpha-numeric components (words) and all punctuation is thrown away. b) The words are used from left-to-right to find items having the word (note anywhere - e.g. smith will find authors, titles, etc). c) The set of items retrieved by each word is ANDed with those retrieved so far, with the constraint that something always remains in the retrieved set. Some points of interest: 1) If you surround something with quotes, rule a above is bypassed. I.e. to search on the word CP/M enter "cp/m" otherwise the slash will cause it to search on 'CP AND M' 2) Authors are in the indices in the form LAST FM, i.e. WALDSTEIN RK Searching on WALDSTEIN will retrieve everything by any author with last name WALDSTEIN. To search a particular author use "WALDSTEIN RK". A more complex full Boolean search capacity is also available. It is used if the search string begins with a parenthesis "(". The operators are (in order of precedence): /=<field list> restrict a set to a list of fields A (f) B results in items with A and B in the same field A NOT B results in items containing term A, NOT term B A AND B results is items containing both term A and term B A OR B results in items with term A OR term B So a legitimate, though overly complex search, is ((science (f) (fantas? or fiction))/=ti and (84 or 85)/=da) not asimov