Publisher Field Search in the NLM Catalog Now Includes Individual Words and Phrases

On August 21, 2014, the NLM Catalog was enhanced to provide single word and phrase searching for a publisher name. Prior to this date, the Publisher field was a left anchored search that required you to know exactly how the publisher’s name appeared on a particular item to get accurate retrieval.

Search for a publisher's name on the main search page by entering the field qualifier [publ] after the search term or phrase (see Figure 1) or by selecting Publisher from the drop-down menu on the NLM Catalog Advanced search page (see Figure 2).

Note that a Publisher field search for:

wiley [publ]

retrieves all material with Wiley in the imprint, whether it appears as:

Wiley

John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Wiley-Blackwell

A phrase search for wiley blackwell would limit retrieval to just the material with Wiley Blackwell in the imprint. The publisher search includes information in both the Publisher and Current Publisher fields when the publisher has changed over time.

Be advised that it is possible to get some false drops in your retrieval. For example, a search of:

publisher [publ]

retrieves companies such as:

Polish State Medical Publisher

Interscience Publisher

but also retrieves records with the note:

publisher not identified (see Figure 3).