A previous tip, Important Decision, mentioned truncation and masking.  How do these work in WebDewey? 

Note that if you type two keywords in the same search box with no operator in between, the "and" operator is assumed. 

Masking and truncation are terms used to refer to the use of wildcard characters in searching.  In general, the most common use of truncation is to retrieve forms of the same word with different endings—often, in the case of a noun, both singular and plural forms.  This is important because if you search, for example, "dragon," in all fields in WebDewey, you retrieve 7 records, whereas if you search "dragon*" or "dragon?"—both the asterisk and the question mark can be used for truncation in WebDewey—you will get 27, including records for Dewey numbers mapped to the LCSH "bearded dragons as pets," which would not be retrieved in a search for the singular "dragon."  The question mark and asterisk, therefore, "mask" zero or more characters, which is why they retrieve both singular and plural forms. 

Another useful application of truncation to searching in WebDewey is when you know the beginning of a Dewey number and want to see all numbers based on that number.  For example, search 636.7* or 636.7? to find numbers about dogs. 

The question mark and asterisk can also be used within a word; for example, retrieve both "intranet" and "Internet" by searching for "int?net" or "int*net."  The number sign (#) masks exactly one character (not zero or one).  Use it to retrieve records containing both "woman" and "women" by entering "wom#n."  (A search for "dragon#" will retrieve "dragons" but not "dragon.") 

Note: To execute a search using any of these symbols, your search term must contain at least three "known" characters in addition to the symbol; for example, you can't enter "m#n" to retrieve records containing both "man" and "men."  The retrieval set generated by a search for so short a term including a wildcard would be too large to be useful, so such searches are not permitted by the system. 

Last revised: 01 February 2004