Ottumwa Public Library

Limiting Movies by Actor

Finally, let's suppose that you would like to see a list of movies available in which a certain actor appeared. Not only is this possible, it's pretty easy too. We are going to achieve this search through the use of a cross-index search.

1. First make sure that you've got the information filled in on the Power search page as it was shown in the first page of this guide.
2. By definition, a cross-index search requires the use of more than one index. You should already have the first index filled out as a Subject Keyword search with films in the input box. Now let's set the type of index in the second drop-down menu as Name.
   
3. Enter the name of the actor (or director) that you would like to cross-index the search for films with. Let's use Brad Pitt in this example.
   
4. Next, make sure that the type of cross-index search you are going to do is an And search. If you were to choose Or the catalog would return items that were either films or had the name Brad Pitt in them. (But boolean searches will be covered more fully in a later guide.)
   
5. Click on the submit button.