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·  Search for a match for an exact word or words.

o  For example: computer human interaction will return any document that contains at least one of the terms computer OR human OR interaction.

·  Specific phrases should be enclosed in double quotation marks: “” .  Words in search phrases must appear in the same order as they appear in database column.

o  For example:   “computer human interaction” will yield search results with that term as a phrase.

·  Searches are case insensitive.
·  Noise words ( a, and, as, the, etc.) are not searched.  A search using only noise words returns no results.  For a list of noise words, click here .
·  Punctuation is ignored.

o  For example: computer failure will match the result: “Where is my computer?  Failure to find it would be expensive.”

Wildcard Searches

Matches words or phrases beginning with the specified text.

·  Use the wildcard symbols to search when there are multiple spellings or various endings.  The wildcard symbol cannot be used as the first character in a search term .   Search will return matches of zero, one, or more characters of the root word or word(s) in the search word or phrase.
·  Enclose a prefix term in double quotation marks: “” , and add an asterisk: * before closing the quotation marks.  

o  For example: the search for “comput*” will return the matches compute, computer and computing .

·  If the search term is not put in double quotation  marks, the search engine considers the asterisk a search character, and will search for exact matches to comput* .
·  When the search term is a phrase, each word contained in the phrase is considered to be a separate prefix.

o  For example: the search term “local wine*” will find results “ local winery ”; “ locally wined and dined ”; etc.

Boolean Operators: And, Or and And Not

Boolean logic defines logical relationships between terms in a search. The Boolean search operators are and , or and and not . You can use these operators to create a very broad or very narrow search.

·  And combines search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms.

o  For example, pilot AND fatigue finds articles that contain both pilot and fatigue .

·  Or combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms.

o  For example, pilot OR fatigue finds results that contain either pilot or fatigue .

·  And Not excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it.

o  For example, pilot AND NOT fatigue finds results that contain pilot but not fatigue .

·  If you use parentheses with the Boolean operators, the terms inside the parentheses are processed first .

Proximity Searches

A proximity search specifies a match of words or phrases that must be close to one another.  This works similarly to the AND operator: both require that more than one word or phrase exist in the column being searched.  As the words in your search appear closer together, the better the match.

·  NEAR indicates that the word or phrase on the left side of the NEAR operator should be approximately close to the word or phrase on the right side of the NEAR operator.

o  For example: a NEAR b

·  Multiple proximity terms can be chained.

o  For example: a NEAR b NEAR c .  This means that word/phrase a should be near word/phrase b , which should be near word/phrase c .