Search Help
Our search engine uses the Verity search engine to search the titles, authors, abstracts, and full text of the articles, papers, and other resources available in the digital library.
Simple Searching
You can simply enter the keywords that you want to match, and the search engine will automatically find all articles that match all of the keywords you enter.
To search for an exact phrase, enter it in quotes ("exact phrase").
Boolean Searching
The search engine also supports the boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT. If you want to use boolean operators, you must enter them in upper case. If they are entered in lowercase, the search engine ignores them. You can also use the minus sign (-word, no space between the minus sign and the word) in place of NOT, and the plus sign (+word, no space between plus sign and the word) in place of AND.
Examples
- computers education urban
- The search engine will return all articles where the title, abstract, or full text contain the keywords computers, education, and urban
- computers education NOT urban or computers education -urban
- The search engine will return all articles where the title, abstract, or full text contain the keywords computers, education, and will exclude all matches that contain the word urban
- computers AND education OR urban
- The search engine will return all articles where the title, abstract, or full text contain the keywords computers and at least one of education and/or urban
- computers OR education AND urban or computers OR education +urban
- The search engine will return all articles where the title, abstract, or full text contain the keywords computers or education and also contain the word urban
Advanced Syntax
If you are familiar with advanced query syntax in Verity, you can use this syntax in the "Advanced Search" box on the search form. Queries are in the form <operator>(term1,term2,term3), and these can be nested. For example, <AND>(computers,education,urban) is identical to the simple search computers education urban. <AND>(computers,<OR>(education,urban)) is the same as computers AND education OR urban.
Verity Operators
- ACCRUE
- Documents must contain at least one of the terms you specify. Relevance is based on the total number of search terms entered. Requires two or more search terms.
- ALL
- Must match all keywords entered. Searches using ALL do not receive a relevancy score (so you can't sort by the relevance of a match).
- AND
- Must match all keywords entered. Searches are ranked by relevancy.
- ANY
- Returns all documents matching any of the keywords entered. Searches using ANY do not receive a relevancy score (so you can't sort by the relevance of a match).
- NEAR
- Returns documents where the keywords given are near one another. Relevancy score is determined by the proximity of the search terms.
- NEAR/n
- Returns documents where the keywords given are near one another within n words. Relevancy score is determined by the proximity of the search terms.
n is a an integer between 1 and 1024. - OR
- Must match all keywords entered. Searches are ranked by relevancy.
- PARAGRAPH
- Returns all documents where the keywords given are in the same paragraph.
- PHRASE
- To indicate search terms that should be treated as an exact phrase.
- SENTENCE
- Returns all documents where the keywords given are in the same sentence.
- SOUNDEX
- Matches words that sound similar, such as Mayers, Meyers and Myers. The search <SOUNDEX>(Myers) will find documents matching Mayers, Meyers, and Myers, as well as other similar sounding words.
Note that the Soundex algorithm is very broad, and so this may result in a large number of matches unrelated to what you are searching for. - STEM
- Allows a given word to be stemmed, for example <STEM>(exchange) will match exchanged, exchanging, exchanges as well as exchange.
- THESAURUS
- Matches terms similar in meaning to the given term. For example, <THESAURUS>(talented) might also match the a document containing skilled.