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• Introduction
• Search Fields
• Description of Fields
• Boolean Operators
• Other Search Syntax
• Advanced Search
• Browsing
• Limiting Search Results
• Relevance and Sorting
• My Account
• Saving Information
• Availability
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• How Do I ... ?
• All Topics (for printing)

Other Search Syntax

Case

Search is not case sensitive. You do not need to capitalize your search terms, except for Boolean Operators.

For example, the following two searches are identical:

united states

United States

Phrase Searches

Use quotes to search for exact phrases. Example:

"united states"

Word Stemming

Word stems are used by default.

For example, this search will find items containing work, works, worker or working:

working

By default, the exact, non-stemmed versions of words are weighted higher than stemmed versions, so they will appear higher in search results. This works well for most searches.

To control how stemming works, click Advanced Search and select one of the Stemming options.

To prevent stemming, click No. This will often give fewer, more exact results.

• Stemming can be completely prevented when searching Title, Author, Subject and Series fields.
• Stemming can be reduced when searching All Fields but cannot be completely prevented.

To give stemmed and non-stemmed versions equal weight, click Yes.

Wildcard Searches

To perform a single character wildcard search use the ? symbol.

For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the search:

te?t

To perform a wildcard search that matches multiple characters (0 or more), use the * symbol.

For example, to search for test, tests or tester, you can use the search:

test*

This may be useful to save typing a long word, or if you do not know the exact spelling of a word.

You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term.

te*t

Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.

Fuzzy Searches

Use the tilde ~ symbol at the end of a Single word Term. For example to search for a term similar in spelling to "roam" use the fuzzy search:

roam~

This search will find terms like foam and roams.

An additional parameter can specify the required similarity. The value is between 0 and 1, with a value closer to 1 only terms with a higher similarity will be matched. For example:

roam~0.8

The default that is used if the parameter is not given is 0.5.

Proximity Searches

Use the tilde ~ symbol at the end of a Multiple word Term. For example, to search for economics and keynes that are within 10 words apart:

"economics Keynes"~10

Boosting a Term

To apply more value to a term, you can use the ^ character. For example, you can try the following search:

economics Keynes^5

Which will give more value to the term "Keynes"