You can significantly improve your searches by following these search tips.
In general, Boolean queries provide more precise searching than Concept search, i.e. they are best at retrieving proper nouns, and words or phrases you know are on the Web site. For example, if you are searching for the name of a company, a person, or a particular publication, a Boolean query would probably return the most accurate list of hits in the shortest time.
Concept queries provide Concept expansion, e.g. a query is expanded to include terms and Concepts semantically related to the specific term(s). They are more suitable for searching broad topics.
Boolean queries must be entered using the standard Boolean operators. Formulating Boolean queries requires more care because word order and syntax can be critical to achieving the desired results, especially if you use nested statements. The default operator is AND, meaning if no operators are entered, AND is assumed between query terms. For example, the Boolean query apples oranges produces the same results as the query apples and oranges.
Operators |
Syntax |
Description |
Precedence |
NOT, ^ |
NOT word1;
^word1 |
Word1 must not be found in the document. |
2 |
AND, &,
BUT |
word1 AND word2;
word1 & word2;
word1 BUT NOT word2;
word1 word2 |
Both word1 and word2 must be found in the
document. If no operator is present between two query terms, AND is the
default operator. |
3 |
WITHIN, WI |
word1 word2 WITHIN N |
Word1 must be found within N words of word2. |
4 |
ADJ |
word1 word2 ADJ N |
Word1 must be found within N words of word2,
and word1 must come before word2. |
4 |
BETWEEN |
word1 BETWEEN word2 AND word3 |
Word1 must be found between word2 and word3. |
4 |
INSIDE |
word1 INSIDE word2 AND word3 |
Alternative to the BETWEEN operator; word1 must
be found inside word2 and word3. |
4 |
OR, | |
word1 OR word2;
word1 | word2 |
Either word1 or word2 must be found in the
document. |
5 |
( ) |
(word1 | word2) & word3 |
Parentheses can be used to override the
precedence of other operators and can be nested to any depth. |
1 |
Note: In the previous table and the following notes, the Boolean
operators are capitalized to distinguish them visually. It is not necessary to
capitalize them in your queries.
Other Tips
More About Concept Search
To prevent the expansion of multiple words, but without the word-order constraint, enclose each word separately. For example, enter "Justice" "Department" to find both Justice Department and Department of Justice.
To improve search accuracy, you can group terms expressing a common concept by enclosing them with parentheses. In Concept and Pattern searches, the words within the parentheses are then expanded, matched and ranked for relevance as a group, instead of as individual words.
Use of parentheses is most effective when searching for multiple related terms that may not be in the dictionary, e.g. (JFK "John Kennedy" Kennedy) election, and when searching for multiple terms that may not be linked to one another semantically, e.g. (motorcycle boat RV) trade shows.
Use of Double Quotes (" ") operator to search for an idiom or a phrase
For Boolean queries, use quotation mark to enclose an entire search string or part of a search string to query for a phrase or idiom in the exact given order. For example, enter "ice cream" (matches will have the words adjacent to each other, in the order given). Without the quotes, the search string ice cream will be treated as individual words, rather than as a single idiomatic term.
For Concept queries, use quotation mark to enclose an entire search string or part of a search string to prevent expansion of specific terms. Further, if the quote marks enclose more than one word, those words must appear in the order entered. This can be useful when searching for a specific name or phrase.
For example, if you enter "child psychology" magazine in a Concept-type query, the phrase children's psychology magazine wouldn't match, because child wouldn't be expanded to children. Similarly, psychology of a child wouldn't match, because even though the stop words of and a are ignored, the terms child and psychology are out of order.
Other Tips
Use of (~) operator if you are not sure about the spelling
If you are not sure about the spelling of a word, you can affix the operator (~) to the front of the desired word(s). For each of these words, the query is expanded to include similarly spelled words. For example, in a Concept-type query, if you aren't sure how to spell "psychology," you could enter child ~psycology to semantically expand "child" while also picking up the word "psychology," even though it wasn't spelled correctly.
Other Tips
Use of Wildcards operators to search for multiple variations of a term
You may use wildcards in both Boolean and Concept queries.
Wildcards are useful when you're not sure what form a particular word takes in the library, when you can't remember a name or a number in its entirety, and when you're searching for multiple terms that have several similar characters (such as "C1050," "C1051," and "C1052"). You enter a portion of the word, name, or number and use one or more wildcards to represent the rest.
Wildcard |
Description |
Example |
* |
Match anything or nothing. |
pharma* |
? |
Match exactly one character. |
la?er |
_ |
Match one or no character. |
colo_r |
@ |
Match exactly one alphabetic character. |
c@er |
# |
Match exactly one numeric character. |
#600 |
\ |
Take the next character literally;
i.e., not as an operator or wildcard. (Functions only if the subsequent character has been
indexed for search.) |
joe\@home |
^ |
Match any character except
the next one. |
199[^7] |
[ ] |
Search expression; can include a
hyphen to indicate a range of letters or numbers; will match only one character in the
brackets. |
A[1-5] |
Other Tips
|
