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| Wildcards
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| You
may need to find variant forms of the words you are searching for.
Some programs have a "wildcard" function. This allows you
to type in a symbol to indicate variant words. Some examples are the
asterisk (*), dollar sign ($), or question mark (?). They are used
at the end of words to find plural or related forms and within words
to find alternative spellings. |
| Child?
may find: Children, childhood, childlike, etc. |
| Behavio?r
may find: Behavior, behaviour, etc. |
| Book*
may find: Book, books, etc. |
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| Boolean
Operators |
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AND |
This
means you are combining two concepts. The search will find materials
with both words. A search for "chocolate AND ice cream"
provides information relating to chocolate ice cream. AND is used
to narrow your search; you can use AND to add other words to form
a more specific search. |
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OR 'chocolate OR ice cream' |
This means
you are searching for documents containing either of the words. So
a search for "chocolate OR ice cream" would provide information
related to all kinds of chocolate and information related to all types
of ice cream. OR is used to broaden a search and is helpful to link
two synonyms together. |
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NOT 'chocolate NOT ice cream' |
This operator
means you are searching for specific information. A search for "chocolate
NOT ice cream" would provide all documents about chocolate not
including documents about chocolate ice cream. NOT is used to narrow
a search and remove words that are not relevant to your topic. |
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