Quick guide to searching in Discovery
Basic Searching
- By default, a basic search is a “keyword” search. Enter a term in the search box and press “enter” on your keyboard or use the search button to execute that search.
Expert Searching
- An expert search may include index labels and boolean operators. You can conduct an expert search from the basic search box or the advanced search screen.
- Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) used in a search must be capitalized. Search terms with boolean operators are processed in left to right order.
- The Advanced search option allows you to keyword-search specific parts of citations. For example, you can search for documents that have a specific word in the titles of documents.
Approximate term queries: asterisk, question mark and pound sign.
- Truncation: Enter a minimum of the first three characters followed by an asterisk (*). As an example: 'architectur?' finds resources containing "architecture", "architectures", or "architecturally"
- Wildcards: Use the pound sign (#) to represent a single character (for example 'wom#n' will find woman and women
Author names are hot linked on search results in the item detail and under editions & formats. Clicking on the name triggers an author keyword search.
Searching Examples
o AND example: transportation AND highway# (finds all resources containing the words "transportation" AND either "highway", "highways"
o OR example: photograph# OR painting# (finds resources containing one or more of the the words, "photograph", "photographs", "painting", "paintings"
o NOT example: kingsolver NOT vegetable (finds resources containing the word "kingsolver" without the word "vegetable"
Other search tips:
- Use filters to refine search results based on content, format, databases, author, year (or range of years), language and/or topics.
- The item detail includes the description, holding libraries, editions & formats and availability. The default tab is availability, and this may contain full text online links, a holdings summary with local call numbers and shelf-status or buttons for request item or place hold functions.
