Basic search instructions
Free text search
Start your search by typing your search terms into the search field. As you type, the search will try to predict your term by offering suggestions, such as the title of a book. This may help you find what you are looking for.
Search terms separated by spaces use the AND search logic and will return results containing all of your search terms.
For example:
Jansson Tove
functions identically to
Jansson AND Tove
Preliminary filtering
You can use the drop-down menu in the search field to limit your search to the title, author or subject.
You can further narrow your search on the results page by adding filters such as permissible uses, content type or year of manufacture.
Search phrase examples
Using the free text search to find material on bicycles:
bicycle
Your search results will be more specific if you use quotes. This will restrict the search to material which feature the exact word “bicycles”:
“bicycles”
If you are searching for a phrase or compound noun, use quotes. This way, the search will not interpret the words as separate search terms:
“University of Helsinki”
Using the OR operator will return results that feature one or more of your search terms. This example search will find results relating to farms or farming:
farm OR farming
If you are searching by author, type the last name first and use quotes:
“Jansson Tove”
An asterisk may be used to truncate the search term to yield results with variations of the term, such as: farms, farming and farmland:
farm*
Narrowing your search
As the default, the search results page displays the best results at the top, based on the relevance of the match. You can also change the order of the search results, for example, you can display them in chronological order by year of manufacture or publication date. Additionally you can view the search results as a condensed list or image gallery.
Filtering search results
You can use the filters on the left-hand side of the results page to refine your search results.
Available online: Only shows results which can be accessed through Finna.
Usage rights: Pertains to material that is available online. The filter has various options depending on the usage rights for resources (CC licences, Rights Statements).
For further information on usage rights, please see Material usage rights. The user is responsible for respecting copyright and privacy laws.
Content type: Lists options relating to the types of material available, such as images, objects, books, etc.
Author: Displays the creators or rights holders of the titles.
Topic: Provides suggested topics to help refine the search.
Region: Shows the geographical region where the material is from.
Year of manufacture: pecifies the time range from which results should be displayed, e.g., 1920s to 1980s. The bar graph indicates how much material is available for the years in question. Use the + and - buttons to zoom in and out of the timeline. Use the arrows to move back and forth along the timeline. The full screen button displays the timeline in a wider window. Select the years on the timeline by typing in the dates or by clicking and dragging along the timeline. Click Update.
- All results
- Results within the time range
- Filter results by year of publication, year of manufacture or year of creation.
Era: Offers suggested dates and decades. This selection will select specific date markings and exclude others. For example, if you select “1930-luku” (the 1930s), the results will only feature material listed under the decade, not those listed under 1933.
Language: Displays languages in which material are available.
Contained in: Lists the titles of journals, etc., if the results feature articles.
Sector: Shows the type of organisation – museum, archive or library.
Organisation: Lists all organisations whose material are listed in the search results.
New in Finna: Indicates which material has been most recently added to Finna.
Once you have selected the filters...
Finna will retain your filter selections and display them under the search field. You can remove an individual filter by clicking on its delete button: . All filters may be removed by clicking Reset filters and making a new search.
Saving searches
Once you have logged in, you can save your search with the Save search function at the bottom of the screen. You can retrieve your saved searches from Your account → Saved searches. You can also set an alert for your saved searches to notify you by email whenever new material matching your search is added.
Combining search terms
The Finna search function uses Boolean operators, the most common of which are AND, OR and NOT. NB! These operators must be typed in CAPITAL LETTERS between search terms.
If you use two or more operators in a single search, use parentheses ( ) to separate terms with different operators. For example:
nutrition AND (diet OR lifestyle)
AND
Use the AND operator to yield search results which feature every term in the search field. If you write several words into the search field and separate them with a space, the space will function as the AND operator.
For example, these two searches will yield the same results:
Karisto Seppälä
and
Karisto AND Seppälä
OR
The OR operator expands your search results. The results will show material that feature at least one of the search terms you indicated. For example, if you are searching for biographical material, you could search for:
memoir OR biography
Or, if you are looking for information on the Eastern Orthodox Church:
“Eastern Orthodoxy” OR “Orthodox Church”
NOT
The NOT operator excludes search results which feature the search term following the NOT operator. For example, if you are looking for material on surrealism, but are not interested in it as a movement in visual arts:
surrealism NOT (painting OR “visual arts”)
NB! The NOT operator cannot be used in single-word searches. For example, the following search will yield no results:
NOT surrealism
Search operators + and !-
In addition to the most common Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), Finna uses the + and !- operators.
+
The + sign indicates that the search term must be found in every search result.
For example, if you are looking for material that must feature economics and which may also feature Keynes:
+economics Keynes
!-
The symbols !- remove any search results which feature the search term following the operator !-.
For example, if you want to find material that feature the term economics but not the term Keynes:
economics !-Keynes
NB! The !- operator cannot be used in single-word searches.
For example, the following search will yield no results:
!-economics
The use of wildcards in search terms
The wildcard symbols * and ? can be used to replace characters in search terms to ensure that the search results include all inflected forms of the search term.
The use of wildcard symbols is not recommended for search terms in Finnish, since their use will exclude some processing measures related to the search terms. These include, for example, the processing of synonyms and splitting terms at a hyphen.
Finna takes the various inflected forms of the search terms into account automatically. For example, if the search term is “taulu”, the search engine will also recognise its inflected forms, such as “taulut” and “taulujen”. The use of wildcards may confuse the search engine’s automatic processes.
Use of wildcards
NB! The wildcard symbols cannot be the first character of a search term.
*
The * symbol replaces one or several characters in the search term. The search results will also include the form of the search term that was used when performing a search.
The search term may be truncated at the end with an asterisk. For example, to find search results for the terms competition, competitions, competitor and competitiveness, use the search term:
competit*
The asterisk may also be used in the middle of a search term to replace one or more characters. For example, to search for both the terms color and colour, use the search term:
colo*r
?
The wildcard symbol ? replaces a single character in a search term, enabling the use of different word forms.
For example, to find results for both the terms woman and women, use the search term:
wom?n
Phrase search
Use the phrase search if you want your search results to only feature entries with a specific word or phrase. To perform a phrase search, enter your search terms within quotation marks.
For example, if you want to find material that feature the phrase University of Helsinki but not City of Helsinki, search with:
“University of Helsinki”
A phrase search may also be used for individual words. In this case, the search will target only the specific term as entered.
For example, if you search with the term “board” in quotation marks, the results will exclude hits for chalkboard, whiteboard and boards:
"board"
ISBN/ISSN search
To find a book by its ISBN number, enter the full number with or without dashes:
978-951-31-6583-3
or
9789513165833
To find a periodical or publication series by its ISSN number:
0782-8195
or
07828195
In Advanced search, you can limit your search to the ISBN/ISSN field.
NB! You can further refine your search results on the results page by using the filters in the sidebar under Narrow search.
Fine-tuning your search
Fuzzy search
Fuzzy search will also yield results that feature words which are similar to your search term.
The search operator ~ will perform a fuzzy search when it is used as the final character of a single-word search.
For example, a fuzzy search with the word roam will also return results with the words foam and roams.
roam~
Proximity search
Proximity searches look for material in which the search terms are within a specified distance, but not necessarily one after the other.
The ~ symbol will perform a proximity search when it is at the end of a multi-term search phrase and is combined with a proximity value.
For example, you can use it to search for materials which feature the search terms economics and Keynes within 10 or fewer terms of one another:
"economics Keynes"~10
Range searches
Range searches can be conducted using either curvy brackets { } or square brackets [ ]. When using curvy brackets, the search takes into account only the values between the terms entered, excluding the terms themselves. With square brackets, the terms entered in the range search will also be included.
For example, to find a term that begins with the letter B or C, the following query may be used:
{A TO D}
To find values between 1920 and 1950:
[1920 TO 1950]
Please note that the operator TO between the values must be entered in CAPITAL LETTERS.
Weighted search terms
The search operator ^ will add weight to the search term in a query.
For example, the weight of the term Koivisto has been increased in this search:
economics Koivisto^5
Searching for Cyrillic material
How to search for material written in the Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic material has been recorded in the database using the Cyrillic alphabet. Any archaic orthography and grammatical forms have been retained as in the original.
To search using the Cyrillic alphabet, you can use any Cyrillic Windows fonts for Modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Serbian.
In a Cyrillic search, an individual character may be replaced with two percentage symbols (%%).
To receive the broadest search results, transliterate your search terms into the Latin alphabet.
Transliterated search
Enter your search terms using a conventional Latin keyboard. Each Cyrillic character corresponds to a single character in the Latin alphabet. The transliteration in Finna follows the ISO-9 standard, but diacritics are unnecessary.
The following exceptions to national transliteration practices apply:
е = e Ельцин = El'cin
ж = z жизнь = zizn'
з = z Заварзин = Zavarzin
й = j Толстой = Tolstoj
х = h Хармс = Harms
ц = c Цветаева = Cvetaeva
ч = c Чехов = Cehov
ш = s Шолохов = Solohov
щ = s Щедрин = Sedrin
ъ = " объект = ob ekt (haussa " on korvattava välilyönnillä!)
ы = y Лыков = Lykov
ь = ' Гоголь = Gogol' tai Gogol
ю = u юность = unost' tai unost
я =a Яков = Akov
њ = n Његош = Negos
љ = l љубав = lubav
ђ = d Ђинђић = Dindic
ћ = c ћуприја = cuprija
џ = d Караџић = Karadic
Ѣ = e мѢра = mera
Ѳ = f Ѳетъ = Fet"
ѵ = i Сѵнодъ = Sinod"