Search Basics
Combining Terms
back to topUse Boolean connectors AND and OR to specify how terms are combined (NOT and XOR are rarely used). When a connector is part of your search phrase, enclose it in double quotes: abbott "and" costello.
Note: Without a connector between words, CLIC will only find them in the same field. Always type words from different fields on the appropriate line of the search screen, or use a connector between them, for example: shakespeare and hamlet (author and title).
AND
To find records that include both words:
orwell and 1984
OR
To find records that include either word:
lake or pond
NOT
To exclude records that contain a word:
saturn not car
XOR
To find either word, not in same record:
cats xor dogsYou can also use parentheses around combinations that you want CLIC to perform first, all on one line. For example, facebook and (privacy or security) will first find records containing either privacy or security, and then find records within that group that include the word facebook.
Phrases and Proximity
Use quotation marks to find an exact phrase, for example: "creighton university," "popular culture," or "human rights". Proximity operators include:
adj
To find words that are adjacent, in the order specified (same as single quotes).
same
To find words in the same field (author, title, subject heading, note).
with
To find words together in the same sentence, in any order.
near
To find words adjacent to each other, in any order.
You can also specify the number of words that separate your search terms. For example, gone with the wind can be searched as gone adj3 wind.
Truncation
Use a dollar sign ($) to replace 0-9 characters at the end of a word. For example, entering disab$ as a search term will find disable, disabled, disability, and disabilities.
Use a question mark (?) to replace one character in a word. For example, wom?n will find either woman or women. Variant spellings with an extra letter must be searched separately: labor or labour.
Punctuation, Capitalization, and Stopwords
back to topCLIC substitutes a space for most punctuation marks, except when searching by call number (U.S.A. becomes U S A). However, CLIC will find words with or without a hyphen (CD-ROM or CD ROM). The ampersand (&), apostrophe ( ' ) and backslash (\) are simply ignored.
CLIC is not case-sensitive (unless you are searching by call number). Your results will be the same whether or not you capitalize proper names. Note that CLIC also ignores "stopwords" such as a, an, as, at, be, but, by, do, for, if, in, it, of, on, the, and to.