Use these tips to streamline and focus your searching.
Boolean Operators can broaden or narrow your search.
Use AND to retrieve results that contain both search terms:
Use OR to retrieve results that contain any and all of your search terms:
Use NOT to exclude search terms:
Quotation marks can be used to retrieve more specific results.
Search terms in quotation marks are searched as a phrase rather than as individual words.
"Global warming" vs global warming.
Truncation and wildcards are used to search for any spelling of a word.
Truncation: use an asterisk (*) to replace a part of a word:
librar* = library, libraries, librarian
Wildcards: use a question mark (?) to replace one letter within a word:
wom?n = woman, women
Use the Fields options to streamline your results.
Title: search in titles only
Harry Potter
Author/Creator: search in author/creator names only
Stephen King
Subject: search the subjects only
Social Work
Boolean operators, Quotation Marks, Truncation, and Wildcards can all be used in Advanced Search.