Member Search Tips

Searching for a member using ONLY the Keywords field is the same as searching for a member using the simple search form in the header.

This simple search will search the following fields: First Name, Last Name, Email, Address, Affiliations, Associations, Languages, Member Type, and Community.
To search for an exact match only, place the search term inside quotation marks.
You can refine or filter your Advanced Member search by including any of the other search fields on the Advanced Member search page. MERLOT will then search for any member who matches the keywords AND the additional field(s) specified.
The greater the number of search terms entered, the greater the number of relevant results.
Sorting your search results

Unless otherwise specified, the resulting list of members will always be sorted by Relevance when search terms have been provided, and by Number of Contributions when there are no search terms provided.
The resulting list can then be resorted by Relevance, Contributions, Last Name, Date Joined, Last Login, Member Type, or Affiliation.

To search a geographic area, such as wanting to locate all members in California, make selections in the Affiliation Category selector – the same fields you would use to search within a specific institution – but do not enter or select an Affiliation Name.
- Entering search criteria in the Address field will only return members who have entered an address in the contact information section of their profile, which is an optional field. However, ALL members are required to specify an Affiliation, and so ALL members will have an Affiliation Location.

The following screenshot shows which Personal Information fields are found in all member profiles, and which are not.

optional fields