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Searching Tips and Tricks: Searching Tips and Tricks

Searching Tips & Tricks

Boolean Searching

Boolean Search operators allow you to broaden or narrow your search results.

Boolean operators consist of the use of AND, OR and NOT in your search query.

AND

Using AND in your search strategy enables your search to be more focused.

For Example:

Alfred Hitchcock AND Rear Window

This will return results for both Alfred Hitchcock and Rear Window
OR

Using OR in your search strategy enables your search to be broadened.

For Example: 

Alfred Hitchcock OR  Alma Reville

This will return results for Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville
NOT

Using NOT in your search strategy enables you to refine your search.

For Example:

Alfred Hitchcock NOT Rear Window

This will return results for Alfred Hitchcock, but not when Rear Window is mentioned.

Wildcard Searching

Wildcard and truncation symbols to create searches where there are unknown characters, multiple spellings or various endings.

?

                                          

 Including a ? in your search query matches exactly one (1) letter.

For example:

Alfred Hit?hcock

You will still get results for Alfred Hitchcock.
# Including a # in your search query match zero (0) to one (1) letter.

For example:

Colo#r

You will get results for both color and colour.
* Including a * in your search query matches multiple letters.

For Example:

Direct*

You will get results for Direct, Directing, Director and Directed.