Searching Summon

Phrase Searching

• Use quotation marks to bind terms as phrases, e.g. "oberlin college"

Boolean Operators

• By default, all terms in a search are combined with the AND operator

• Boolean operations (AND, OR, NOT) and must be entered in ALL CAPS.

  • cats AND kittens
  • cats OR kittens
  • cats NOT kittens
    
    
• Use the minus sign before a term to exclude items
  • dogs -puppies

Wild Cards and Truncation Symbols

• The asterisk (*) will match zero or more characters within a word or at the end of a word
  • e.g. lab*r will find labour or labor
  • e.g. psycholog* will find psychology, psychological, psychologically, etc.
• The question mark (?) will match any one character
  • e.g. wom?n will find women or woman or womyn
• Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search

Still Not Finding What You Want?

• Try the Advanced Search options
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