Search Tips
How to Search
- Enter search terms in the search box, it will search the metadata and internally in documents for the term you entered.
- Refine your search by selecting terms in the “Refine Your Selection” section. Or filter your results by searching for an exact term in Collection, Record Type, Date, Topic, Place, Person, or Type fields.
- When reviewing search results, right-click and open the result in a new tab for easier viewing.
- If you receive an error message, try refreshing the page.
How to Use Search Operators and Wildcards
Search operators and wildcards can help you create complex searches, refine your results, include variations of search terms, and also exclude non-relevant results. You can use one or more at the same time. Below is a list of operators and wildcards:
- And: Allows you to combine multiple search terms, to retrieve results that have all the terms (e.g., conservatory AND russell will only retrieve results that have both conservatory and russell).
- Or: Allows you to search for either one term or another (e.g., russell Or taylor will only retrieve results that have either russel or taylor).
- Not: Allows you to search for one term and not another (e.g., russell NOT commencement will only retrieve results that have the term russell and exclude any that have the term commencement). This is extremely helpful if you realize you need to refine your search to exclude some results.
- Quotes (“”): Allows you to search for an exact phrase (e.g., “George Russell” will retrieve results that have Russell’s full name).
- Asterisk (*): Allows you to search for variations of term (e.g., alumn* will retrieve results that include alumni, alumna, or alumnus).
- Question mark (?): Allows you to search for spelling/number variations (e.g., sonat? will retrieve results for ‘sonata’ and ‘sonate’).
- Tilde (~): Allows you to do proximity searches, you can search for a term a specific distance from another term (i.e. “string quartet” ~10 will retrieve results that have ‘string’ and ‘quartet’ within 10 spaces of each other).
- You can also use the tilde to do fuzzy searches to retrieve similar terms (i.e. dorm~ will retrieve results for dorm dormitory).
