How to Search

In a keyword search, AND, OR, and NOT may be used as cues to the search engine on how to look for the other keywords you enter, and to help control the results of your search.

AND

AND narrows your search results to just sources that contain both keywords.

OR

A search with OR broadens your results to include sources with either or both keywords.

NOT

NOT is the most restrictive operator, and results will never include the keyword that follows it. Use sparingly.

You can also control your search results by making search terms more precise or variable.

Wildcards ? *

These may replace characters in a keyword with more than one spelling.

?  replaces a single character:  wom?n will search for woman, women, etc.

*   may replace multiple characters:  cultur* finds results for culture, cultural, culturize, and more

"Quotation Marks"

Search for an exact phrase or spelling by placing quotation marks around it.
(The catalog search default is to find both words regardless of where they are in relation to one another.)

If you've ever bought anything online, you probably noticed that filters are built into most platforms with searchable content. The library catalog is no different!

While a general keyword search might give you thousands of results, you can narrow this down to something more manageable by selecting a few filters. For example, try limiting your results to physical items, a specific campus library, or a range of publication years.

Pearl-building is a multi-layered search strategy that comes in handy at the beginning of the research process.

• First, find a highly promising source related to your topic of choice.
• Read through it, looking for useful terminology and related subjects--this will improve any further keyword searches.
• Also, check for related works cited in its reference list. (Some databases will even provide a list of other works that have used this one in their own research.) Pull any that sound relevant to your search.
• As you find more good sources, keep checking their reference lists, and watch your collection of valuable search results grow!