Advanced Search Guide

Search Operators

• The + operator makes the word it’s attached to mandatory. In an OR search, searching for spatial reasoning will include all items that have one of these words. Searching for spatial +reasoning requires all items returned to include the word “reasoning”, and they may also include “spatial”. Searching for ‘+spatial +reasoning’ requires all items returned to include the word ‘spatial’ AND the word ‘reasoning’.
• The - operator excludes a word from the results. Searching for spatial -reasoning returns all items that have the word “spatial”, but not the word “reasoning”. This works both in OR and AND searches.
• The ? operator matches a single letter inside a word. Searching for w?rd would match “word” and “ward”, but not “weird”.
• The * operator matches any number of letters (including zero) inside a word. Searching for w*rd matches “wrd”, “word”, “ward”, “weird”, and so on.

Phrase Matching

If you put multiple search terms in quotes, they become a phrase. Searching for “Rosa Parks” will only find items that have this specific phrase in them. If you include multiple phrases in the search query, their relationship depends on the prepended search operator.

 

<< Back to Advanced Search