Keyword

Finds words anywhere within an author, title, contents, series, publisher, or subject field.

Whales
Insomnia

Multiple Keywords

The system will automatically supply AND between words; multiple words entered for the search will all occur somewhere in the retrieved records, though not necessarily in the order entered. Both examples on the right will retrieve the same results.

transportation north carolina

transportation and north and carolina

Keyword Phrases

Search for complete phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks. Words enclosed in quotation marks will appear together exactly as typed.

"center for marine science"
"nursing care"

Combining Keywords
(Boolean Operators)

Use AND or OR to specify multiple words in any field, any order.

Use AND NOT to exclude words.

Select the operator you wish to use from the list on the Advanced Search form.

stocks and bonds

(alaska or canada) and (adventure and not vacation)

Wildcards

* The asterisk matches up to five non-space characters, starting at the specified position in the word. For example, "inter*" will match "internal" and "internet", but will not match "international". The '*' wildcard may only appear after at least two characters. The '*' wildcard may also be embedded in a search string. For example, "colo*r" would match both "color" and "colour".

**The double asterisk matches any number of non-space characters, starting at the specified position in the word. For example, "comput**" will match all words that begin with "comput" (e.g., "computer", "computation", etc.). The '**' wildcard may be embedded in a search string.

? The question mark replaces a single character anywhere within a word.

account*
colo*r





agri**





wom?n

Keywords near each other
(Proximity Operators)

NEAR is used to retrieve records that contain the specific words or phrases within ten words of each other in the same indexed field. WITHIN is similar to NEAR, but allows the user to specify the maximum number of words that may appear between the specified words. WITHIN 10 and NEAR are equivalent.

California near university

Field Limits

Field limits may be specified by selecting by selecting a field limit from the selection list on the Advanced Search form. These limits appear before the word or phrase to be searched. A field limit causes the system to search only the specified field for the specified word(s).

Field limits may also be specified in the keyword input box by typing the appropriate index tag followed by a colon. For example, a:Doctorow (to limit to the author index). Available indexes are "a" for author, "t" for title, "d" for subject, and "n" for note.

[Author] Doctorow
[Title] blue moon




a:Doctorow (for author)
t:blue moon (for title)

Global Search

Enter a single asterisk (*) into the top search box on the Advanced Search form, then use the limit options (language, format, location, publisher, or year) to search for materials with the characteristics you need.

* and Russian in the drop down language menu to limit to items in the russian language in our collection.

* and UNCW Reference Collection in the drop-down location menu to limit to items in the Reference Collection.

Grouping

Keyword search resuts are usually grouped by relevance to bring the most likely titles to the top of the list. Each group represents a similar level of relevance and results are sorted within the group by date or title. To get an ungrouped result set, use Boolean operators to form a complex search query.

Most relevant
Highly relevant
Moderately relevant
Possibly relevant
Least relevant