Combining terms from different fields

Using the Advanced Search, you can combine terms from up to three fields.  You may select up to three different fields, or you can search the same field with three different terms.  For example, if you would like to find works by Jonathan Dollimore about Shakespeare, type shakespeare in the first Search for: box.

In the next box, type jonathan dollimore. Select Author in the Index box next to it. 

Keyword is the default index field to be searched.

Your results will be slightly different if you use the drop down menu and select the Subject index for the term shakespeare.

  If you want to find works about Shakespeare that were published in Boston, type shakespeare in the first box, with keyword in the Index box.  In the next box, type boston and select Place of Publication in the Index box. Note that the Advanced Search lists more available index types than does the Basic Search, which only explicitly allows Keyword, Author, and Title.

Boolean operators

When combining terms from different fields, you need to tell the system how to combine them.  The default is AND.

AND will narrow the results of your search to those records that include both of the terms you type in.  In the example above, you are looking for Shakespeare AND Jonathan Dollimore.

OR is helpful when using synonyms, i.e. car OR automobile.

NOT will eliminate those records that contain certain terms. For example, to narrow a search for Rilke to works that do not treat his poetry, choose NOT when combining terms. However, you should be careful with this kind of limiting, since a relevant work might cover the genre you are interested as well as his poetry.

Limiting a search

Year

You can limit to a single year by typing it, e.g., 1994, or beginning with a year, e.g., 1994- , or within several years, e.g., 1994-1995. Remember that the year of publication refers to the year in which the secondary article or book was published (not the date a book appeared about which you are seeking criticism). Another way to limit your search to works published in a specific year (but not a range of years) is to use the source in your search phrase.

Type

Another way to limit is by the type of publication. This limit can be useful if you are trying to identify a particular article by a prolific scholar, or if you are interested only in articles in journals. You can limit only to one publication type at a time.

See also source searching.

Language

The option to limit by language in the MLA is clearly biased toward English. You can select English or non-English materials.

Plurals

To search for a word and its plural form, add a plus sign + to the singular form. The plus + will search for any plural formed with either -s or -es. For example, giraffe+ retrieves all records that contain giraffe and giraffes.

To find information about pollution AND (lake+ OR ocean+), type the search terms enclosed in parentheses in the second Search for: box. You can also enter the entire search string into the first Search for: box.

To search for the plural of words that change form, such as mouse or story, search for both forms and combine them with the Boolean operator OR. For example, to retrieve mouse and its plural, search for mouse OR mice.

Truncation

Truncation allows you to search for a term and its variations by entering a minimum of the first three letters of the term followed by an asterisk *. For example, securit* retrieves records that contain security, securities, securitization, etc.

Note: Truncation can only be used after the third character. Also, truncation is currently set to read a limit of 50 index entries; this limit was devised to achieve better performance by the FirstSearch system and will result in an error message if the user enters a truncation query that is too general.

Wildcards

Wildcards are used to represent from zero to nine additional characters in a search term. They are useful when you are unsure of spelling, when there are alternate spellings, or when you only know part of a term. FirstSearch recognizes two wildcards.

A pound sign # represents a single character.

A question mark ?, alone or with a number, represents from zero to nine additional characters. Include a number if you know the maximum number of characters the wildcard will replace. Otherwise, use the question mark ? alone to represent any number of characters within a single term, including no additional characters.

Note: Wildcards can only be used after the third character of a term.

Punctuation

In general, do not enter punctuation such as , . ; and symbols such as $ % when you search.

OCLC holdings symbols often contain special characters. Do not remove these characters when searching in an index such as "library" or when entering symbols for a limit.

© 2004 Yale University Library
This file last modified 07/06/04
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