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Discovery Guide

Expert searching

Expert searching is one step further from the basic searching as it involves the use of the following:

  • boolean operators,
  • wildcards,
  • truncations, and
  • phrase search.

These techniques require that you follow specific syntax rules and are used to narrow down or expand the number of search results.

Boolean operators

This type of search uses operators that help you narrow or broaden your search. The most common operators are AND, OR, NOT. Check the table below to see when and how to use them in Discovery.

Boolean Operators in Discovery Example & Syntax Behavior Tips

AND

or

Plus symbol

(+)

library AND anxiety

or

library + anxiety
  1. Retrieves both terms.
  2. Narrows down search results.
  1. Good practice when you want to combine more than one search terms.
  2. The operator "AND" needs to be in capital letters.

OR

library (anxiety OR fear)
  1. Retrieves one or either terms.
  2. Expands search results.
  1. Good practice when there is more than one commonly used set of keywords that describe a topic.
  2. The boolean operator "OR" needs to be in capital letters.

NOT

or

Minus symbol

(-)

library anxiety NOT graduate

or

library anxiety -graduate
  1. Retrieves the first term but not the second.
  2. Narrows down search results.
  1. Good practice when not useful words pop up in your results.
  2. You can also use the minus symbol or a hyphen (-) instead.
  3. Do not add a space after the hyphen or the minus symbol. The search term you wish to exclude should appear immediately after it.
  4. The boolean operator "NOT" needs to be in capital letters.

Wildcards, truncations, and phrase search

Discovery supports the use of wildcard, truncation, and phrase search symbols to expand or focus the searches.

Wildcards Example & Syntax Behavior Tips

Number sign

(#)

wom#n
  1. Retrieves both woman and women.
  2. Expands search results.
  1. Good practice to retrieve plurals.
  2. Use it to replace one character in a search.
  3. A minimum of three characters must precede the symbol.

Question mark

(?)

encyclope?dia

or

res?4tion
  1. Retrieves encyclopedia and encyclopaedia. Retrieves respiration, restoration, reservation, etc.
  2. Expands search results.
  1. Good practice to retrieve plurals or words spelled with different ways.
  2. Replace 0 to 9 unknown characters in a search term.
  3. Followed by a number, replace the specified number of unknown characters (?n — question mark followed by a number from 1 to 9).
  4. A minimum of three characters should precede the symbol to work well.
Truncation Example & Syntax Behavior Tips

Asterisk

(*)

connect*
  1. Retrieves connect, connection, connectivity.
  2. Expands search results.
  1. Good practice when you want to retrieve the variant endings of a word.
Phrase search Example & Syntax Behavior Tips

Quotation marks

("")

"library anxiety"
  1. Retrieves both terms when they appear together as an exact phrase.
  2. Narrows down search results.
  1. Good practice when you want something specific.

Transition from expert to advanced searching

Before starting an advanced search make sure that you have:

  1. identified your search ideas.
  2. selected key search terms.
  3. determined the relationships between terms.
  4. combined terms using Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT).

Moving to advanced searching techniques requires the knowledge of several technical details related to Discovery services that are usually used to find focused results, this is why you should have exchaustively used basic and expert searching techniques.

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