Search Tips
| Remove colons (Classic Catalogue only) |
Do not include a colon (:) in a keyword search - otherwise you will get NO ENTRIES FOUND. You may need to remove words which are boolean operators from a keyword search (eg. after, near, or) as they they are acting as operators and not being found as words. |
| Wildcards |
Words may be right-hand truncated using an asterisk * in place of other characters. The * wildcard may also be embedded in a search string. You may use ? to replace a single character anywhere within a word.
Examples : environment* polic*, wom?n |
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| Boolean Operators (Classic Catalogue only) |
The boolean operators 'and', 'or', 'and not' and brackets allow you to construct your query and indicate the relationships between your search terms. The before and after operators are used to retrieve records that contain the specified words or phrases in a particular order in the record.You can type these directly or use the multiple boxes and drop menu options.
Example : (jazz or blues) and music
Example : (alaska or canada) and (adventure and not vacation)
Example : management after cardiac
Example : chester before arthur |
| Field limits |
A field limit causes the system to search only the specified field for the specified word(s). |
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| Location, Material Type and language limits |
Select these as needed. Multiple limits within one box may be selected by holding down the CTRL key as you click (eg. Print material and Video/DVD can both be selected). |
| Grouping |
Keyword search results are usually grouped by relevance to bring the most likely titles to the top of the list. Each group represents a similar level of relevance and results are sorted within the group by date or title. A complex query using boolean operators will not be grouped. |
