HOW THE FIND INFORMATION SEARCH WORKS

This system searches all title words and keywords for indexes, electronic journals, catalogs and databases. The results are displayed in order of relevance.

FIELDS SEARCHED:
- Title, Alternate Title, Collection, Vendor, “About” files (all records)
- Assigned keywords, Description (indexes, catalogs and databases only)

STOPWORDS:
There is no stopword list.

PUNCTUATION:
All punctuation except apostrophes is ignored by the search system. Apostrophes must be included in search if the word in the database contains an apostrophe.

Example: To find “Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory,” you must include the apostrophe in “Ulrich’s”

OPERATORS:
The search uses an automatic “AND” operator. Other operators (e.g., “OR”, “NOT”) are not yet supported.

Example: A search for the journal Higher Education Quarterly looks for all 3 words: Higher and Education and Quarterly.

NOTE: If your search contains a word that is not found in the database, such as a typographical error, that word is discarded and the search continues for the other word(s) in your search.

TRUNCATION, PHRASE SEARCHING AND DISPLAY ORDER:
There is no truncation symbol. A search retrieves and displays, in this order, all resources in the database that have:

1. TITLES that MATCH EXACTLY the search terms entered;
2. TITLES that BEGIN WITH the terms entered (right truncation,);
3. TITLES that CONTAIN the terms entered (right and left truncation,);
4. WORDS in other fields (vendor, keywords, description, help) that MATCH EXACTLY the terms entered (no truncation).

SEARCHING FOR ELECTRONIC JOURNALS BY COLLECTION:
Single word searches retrieve records that CONTAIN the term in the title field or the collection field. (Both fields have right and left truncation.)

Example: A search for “Lexis” displays all resources that CONTAIN that term in the title field, followed by the resources that CONTAIN that term in the collection field.

In multiple word searches, terms in the collection field are not truncated.

Example: A search for "higher education LexisNexis" retrieves several results, but "higher education lexis" retrieves none because the entry in the Collection field is LexisNexis.