Search Guidelines

Several techniques are available for searching. You can use:

Keyword search

A keyword search uses one or more complete words that are contained anywhere in the item's record, including: titles, notes, abstracts, summaries, descriptions and subjects. Keywords can also be names of people and places that are the subjects of a library resource or a listing in a directory.

You can enter words in upper or lower case, and if you use multiple words you can enter them in any order.

    Examples

    blood chemistry politics
    engineering shakespeare hamlet garrick
    geothermal energy trumpet
    hemingway wildflowers north america

Your search results can contain a range of items related to your search keyword(s):

  • words from the title
  • words that describe the subject matter
  • the author's name
  • the item's format and/or language
  • year of publication
  • name(s) or publishers and/or distributors of the item
  • if the item is an article, the name of the magazine or journal in which the article appeared
  • for recoreded music and movies: artist, actor, or director name
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Phrase search

A phrase search uses quotation marks to allow an exact phrase to be searched as a whole word (that is, bounded by spaces).

    Examples:

    This search... Returns these titles...

    Phrase:

    		 Abnormal blood chemistry values in Hodgkin's disease
    Blood chemistry tutorials
    Early blood chemistry in Britain and France
    Study in post-operative blood chemistry

    Keyword:

    		 Abnormal blood chemistry values in Hodgkin's disease
    Chemistry of blood type
    Early blood chemistry in Britain and France
    General clinical chemistry — Blood loss from laboratory tests

Although these examples show titles, your search results can contain the same range of items described for Keywords, above.

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Boolean operators

Boolean operators allow you to group, include, or exclude certain terms in your search. You can use these operators:

Operator Returns items whose record contains...

AND

 All of the words entered in the search box.
Note: This is the default for a keyword search.

Example:  is the same as

OR

Any of the words entered in the search box.

Examples: 

NOT

The word that precedes NOT, but do not contain the word that follows NOT in the search box.

Examples: 

 

Although Boolean operators are frequently shown in all upper case, use of upper case is not required.

Note: Boolean searching does not support complex searches requiring the use of parentheses, such as ford (gerald NOT henry).

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Wildcards

Wildcards are special characters used to represent additional characters in a search term. They are useful when you are unsure of spelling, when there are alternate spellings, or when you only know part of a term. You can use these two wildcards:

Pound sign (#).   The pound sign, also called a number sign or hash mark, represents a single character.

    Examples:

    This search... Returns items whose record contains...
    woman
    women
    advertise
    advertize

Question mark (?).  The question mark (?) represents any number of additional characters. Include a number if you know the maximum number of characters the wildcard will replace.

    Examples:

    This search... Returns items whose record contains...
    anderson
    andersen
    burner
    butler
    butterfield
    butterfly
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Truncation

Truncation allows you to search for a term and its variations by entering a minimum of the first three letters of the term followed by a question mark symbol (?) or an asterisk (*).

    Examples:

    This search... Returns items whose records contains...
    security
    securities
    securitization
    investor
    invested
    investing
    investiture
    investment
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