Phrase Searching

• use quotation marks to bind terms as phrases, e.g. "oberlin college"

Boolean Operators

• by default, all terms in a search are combined with the AND operator
• boolean operations (AND, OR, NOT) must be entered in ALL CAPS
  • cats AND kittens
  • cats OR kittens
  • cats NOT kittens
• use the minus sign before a term to exclude items (dog -puppies)

Wild Cards and Truncation Symbols

• the asterisk (*) will match zero or more characters within a word or at the end of a word
  • e.g. lab*r will find labour or labor
  • e.g. psycholog* will find psychology, psychological, psychologically, etc.
• the question mark (?) will match any one character
  • e.g. wom?n will find women or woman or womyn
• wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search

Still Not Finding What You Want?

• try the Advanced Search
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