N.B. This page is a guide to the new WorldCat Discovery interface, not the old, FirstSearch interface.
| Truncation |
Asterisk: *
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child* retrieves child, children, childbirth, childbearing, childish.
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| Wildcard (single character) |
Pound sign: # |
wom#n retrieves woman, women, womyn. N.B. At least 3 letters must precede a wildcard in a query.
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| Wildcard (multiple caracters) |
Question mark: ? |
colo?r retrieves color, colour, colonizer, colorimeter. N.B. At least 3 letters must precede a wildcard in a query.
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| Phrases |
Put phrases in quotation marks.
Default: AND operators between multiple words.
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"north pole" retrieves documents in which the words north and pole appear next to each other, in that exact order.
north pole (without quotation marks) retrieves documents that contain both words north and pole, regardless of where the words appear in the document.
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| Boolean operators |
AND, OR, NOT
You may also use the following symbols in place of AND, OR, NOT:
+ (plus sign for AND)
| (pipe sign for OR)
- (minus sign for NOT)
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lincoln AND douglas retrieves only documents that contain both lincoln and douglas.
lincoln OR douglas retrieves documents that contain either lincoln or douglas.
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| Proximity operators |
Not available in WorldCat Discovery
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