Introduction to Library Research

This page will provide an overview of different types of advanced search methods you can use when searching the library catalog or academic databases. This page will cover the following search methods:

• Wildcards
• Grouping terms
• Truncation

These search methods will work in most academic databases like Academic Search Complete, ProQuest Central, Taylor & Francis, and more. 

Searching with wildcard characters

You can include the following wildcard characters in your searches:

• ?—enter a question mark to perform a single character wildcard search. For example, typing wom?n to search for records will include variations of the word like woman, women, and so forth in the search results. 
• *—enter an asterisk to perform a multiple character wildcard search. For example, type cultur* to search for record that will include variations of the word like culture, cultural, and culturally. 

However, the system ignores wildcard characters placed at the beginning of terms. For example, the system treats the search terms ?aying and *aying as if you had searched for the term aying. 

Wildcard examples

• human* - the query will find words like human, humanity, humanist, and other words that start with the prefix human-
• bird* - the query will find words like bird, birds, birding, birdman, and other words that start with the prefix bird-
• behavior* -the query finds words like behavior, behavioral, behaviorist, behaviorism, and other words that start with the prefix behavior-
• child* -the query finds words like child, children, childhood, and other words that begin with child-
• wom?an - the query finds results for woman or women 

Benefits of wildcards

• Allows you to modify your search and find variations of words without having to type out each word individually

Grouping terms in a search

In order to group terms in a query or search string, you will want to use parenthesis to enclose the terms you wish to group. The grouped terms will be combined by a Boolean operator. 

Example: searching using OR and grouping

If you are looking for information on video games and young adults you could expand your search by grouping synonyms using the Boolean operator OR. So your search would look like:

"video games" AND ("young adults" OR teenagers)

The parenthesis sort of work like math--instead of having to do two separate searches for "video games" AND teenagers; "video games" AND "young adults," using the parenthesis applies this logic automatically in one search. 

Searching with truncation

Truncation allows you to find words with similar spellings by using the tilde (~) symbol at the end of the search term. 

Truncation example:

Dostoyevsky~

This would search for variant spellings: such as dostoevsky, dostoievski, dostoevsky, dostoyevski, dostoevskii, dostoevski, etc.

Note:

Please note that using this method will yield a very large number of results, and you will need to narrow using other filter options. When searching with truncation, the first letter will always stay the same no matter the variation spelling. 

*example from JSTOR