Phrase Searching
Discovery Search allows for phrase searching with the use of “ ”. The query “teacher education” will find results with that phrase.
Searching Specific Fields
The single search box in will search across many fields automatically.
You can explicitly search the following fields by using the search fields dropdown box.
- Title
- Subject Terms
- Author
Boolean Operators
Discovery Search offers the following Boolean operations: OR, NOT and AND. The operators must be written in ALL CAPS.
By default, all terms in a search are combined with the AND operator. To expand the results set, use the OR operator “microcircuits OR nanocircuits” will return items that contain either term.
This can be combined with quoted terms such as “teacher education” OR “educator training”.
To exclude items in Discovery Search, use the NOT operator or “-” character before a term. When used in the following query “animal NOT dog” the results will not include the term “dog”.
Wildcard Use
Searches within Discovery Search can be performed using the wildcards “?” and “*”.
The question mark (?) will match any one character and can be used to find “Olsen” or “Olson” by searching for “Ols?n”.
The asterisk (*) will match zero or more characters within a word or at the end of a word. A search for “Ch*ter” would match “Charter”, “Character”, and “Chapter”. When used at the end of a word, such as “Temp*”, it will match all suffixes “Temptation”, “Temple” and “Temporary”.
Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search.