Unravel the libraries

Few indexes have automatic phrase searching, but most will have proximity connectors that locate words together or allow you to specify a distance and order in which you want the terms to appear. Enter the symbol followed by a number for the distance between terms. Include spaces between terms and proximity connectors.

Examples:


Special w1 education = will only find the phrase “Special Education” where the words are next to each other and only in the order specified by your search

w1 finds terms within one word of each other

Nobel n4 Prize = Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel prize winners, Prize winners for the Nobel

Wildcard symbols are used for masking a string of characters in your search term. Masking is useful when a word has different spellings, is hyphenated, if you are uncertain about the spelling, and for capturing plurals or specific endings.

humo#r = humor, humour

Use # for alternative spellings within a word


birth! = birth, births BUT NOT birthdays, birthing

Use ! for one character


facilit!!! = facility, facilities BUT NOT facilitation

Use one ! per character


These symbols can be used in MN-CAT Plus as well as many of the article databases at the U. Some databases assign a different symbol so be sure to check each database as you search.

Hopefully most of us are familiar with using "AND" in between search terms, but did you know that you can also use terms such as "OR" and "NOT" in between search terms in order to improve your search results?

IMPORTANT: When searching the U library databases it is important that you either type the word "AND" in between search terms or else choose it from a drop down. If you simply type a series of search terms in the text box the library databases will treat those words as a phrase and will only return results with that exact phrase in the tile and/or abstract.

When you want to expand your search results the boolean operator "OR" can be very helpful. For example, you might try searching for children OR teen OR kids OR youth. The term OR will search the title and abstract and return results that have any of those terms.