Library Search Tips

Keywords

Search a subject: gears
Search a document number: 1953007
Search an abbreviation: TSP
Search a name: watanabe

Wildcard

To truncate a word, use an asterisk (*) at the end. For example, the search "comput*" would retrieve documents that have the words "computer", "computing", "computation", etc.

Multiple word searches

"OR" is implied. Documents will be retrieved that have at least one of the specified words in your search. For example a search for 'gears welds' will return results that contain at least gears or welds.

Refine a multiple word search

+	stands for AND. A leading plus sign indicates this word must be present. A search for 'fatigue +analysis' means the same as fatigue AND analysis, and finds documents containing both words.
-	stands for NOT. A search for 'cammett -coverage' will find documents containing the word cammett but not the word coverage.
"	A phrase that is enclosed within double quote (" ") characters matches only documents that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed. A search for "ICSP-11" will return documents containing exactly that phrase. Note: If searching for a term that contains a hyphen or other operator it is important to enclose it in double quotes.

Combining operators

Operaters can be combined. A search for cammett +coverage -tsp will retrieve abstracts that contain both the words cammett and coverage; then among those the ones that do not contain the word tsp.

Capitalization

Capital letters are ignored. tsp is the same as TSP

Advanced Searches

> <	These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned document. The > operator increases the contribution and the < operator decreases it. See the advanced example below.
( )	Parentheses group words into subexpressions. Parenthesized groups can be nested.
~	A leading tilde acts as a negation operator, causing the word's contribution to the row's relevance to be negative. This is useful for marking “noise” words. A row containing such a word is rated lower than others, but is not excluded altogether, as it would be with the - operator.

Examples

+weld +(>aluminum <crack)
Find rows that contain the words “weld” and “aluminum”, or “weld” and “crack” (in any order), but rank “weld aluminum” higher than “weld crack”.

+weld alumnium
Find rows that contain the word "weld", but rank rows higher if they also contain "alumnium".

+weld ~aluminum
Find rows that contain the word “weld”, but if the row also contains the word “aluminum”, rate it lower than if row does not. This is “softer” than a search for '+weld -aluminum, for which the presence of “aluminum” causes the row not to be returned at all.