Search Tips & Tricks
The following are some search tips to get you started. Boolean operators must be capitalized otherwise they are ignored.
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AND: Retrieve article that contains ALL terms, narrows search results Best used when you have two or more different concepts |
obesity AND video games |
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OR: Retrieve articles that contain ANY terms, broadens search results Best used when you have two or more similar concepts |
mountain lion OR puma OR panther |
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NOT: Eliminates articles that contain the SECOND terms, narrows search results Best used when applied to the end of a search |
cigarettes NOT marijuana |
| " ": tells the database you’re interested in a specific phrase, narrows search results | "synthetic environments" |
| ( ): order of operations matters; group concepts together when combining AND and ORs | Twain AND (biography OR works) |
Refining your search results
- Use facetsThe left column of the search results page offers a number of facets (or filters), to further refine your results according to: format, author, source, subject, date, journal, language and more.
- Use the advanced searchRefine your search to include multiple filters by title, author, subject, call numbers, ISBN/ISSN numbers, material type, language or publishing dates.
Use the 'Search in full text where available' toggle.
- The default Search or the 'Available Online' search will search the full text of documents. If you would like NOT to search the full text but search only the citation information like title, author, abstract and other descriptive metadata, you can toggle off the full text menu option.
"Starts with" search type operator in advanced search
Returns results that contain words that start with the specified string. This search type performs left-anchored title and call number searches only. Not available for other search types. When performing a title search, it is recommended that you omit leading articles.
Searching for newspaper articles
- Use the Library Search Newspaper searchNot comprehensive. Newsbank is NOT included in this search.
Requesting a physical item
If you are requesting a physical item from a title that has many items then examining the description field in the location table can make finding the item you want much easier than paging through the table using the Show More Items link.
No results next steps
The "No Results" page in Library Search happens when the search terms do not match any items in the local discovery index.
The "No Results" page suggests trying the left side filter called, "Add results beyond the library's collection."
When you choose this filter then Library Search expands its discovery index to include citations which we may not have access to.
A primary benefit to seeing the additional citations is that those citations are then available to be requested.