Using Pandemonium's Category Browser

Welcome to Pandemonium's unique book search tool.  Using this tool, you can find books in ways you never before imagined!  Have you ever walked into a bookstore and said "I want a book, but I don't know what I want?" then spent hours browsing?  Do you want to find a book for your friend who is really into Steampunk, or a birthday gift for a niece who loves Unicorns? Let me guide you through some ways this system can be used to locate your next favorite book.

• Let's say you want to find a book that is the first book of a series.  To do this, go to the Category Browser page, open the 'Miscellaneous' tab, and check the box next to "First in a Series".  Next to this item is a number in parenthesis: this is how many results you can expect from this one item.  Now go to the bottom of the Category Browser page and press "Search".  A set of pages containing the first 10 books from this category will appear on the screen.  You can look through all those books to see if there's something that you want to purchase.

• If that's too many books to look through, you can refine the search.  Go back to the Category Browser page.  Ensure that "First in a Series" is still checked, then select another category as well.  For this example, try opening "Writing Style" and selecting "Upbeat".  Since you only want books that are BOTH "First in a Series" and "Upbeat" you need to ensure that the "Scope" selection is for "All Terms".  Now scroll to the bottom and press "Search".  You will now be presented with a much shorter list of books that are both "First in a Series" AND "Upbeat".

• The Category Browser also has "children" and "parent" selections.  These can be found whenever an item has a little dash ("-") in front of the selection criteria.  For example, all award winners are a child of that award nominee.  Some parents have multiple children, as in the case of Ghost, Vampire and Zombie, which all have the same parent of "Undead". (See "Character Races, Genders and Traits").  So if you wanted to see a list of all books that have undead characters in it, you can select a Scope of "Any Term", select "Automatically include Children", and select "Undead".

• Another way of using the search system is to select tags while looking at books.  Under the title of the book, above the picture of the book cover is a series of tags which relate to each book.  If you click on any one of those tags you will get a list of all books that relate to that one tag.  

So, have fun finding all those books you never knew existed!   

Note: the best way to quickly clear all entries in the Category Browser is to open a new browser tab with the Category Browser in it, and close the current tab with the excess selections.