Tell the database exactly what you want it to find by using these strategies!
Wildcards and Truncations
Use a wildcard when you need to be able to interchange one letter in a search term.
Both # and ? will function as wildcards in Worldcat Discovery.
Example: You want to include man or men/woman or women because your search results need to include human males/human females.
m#n will return men and man---it will also return min, mon, etc.
Wom?n will return woman, woman, womyn...
If you need to include all words that start with the same letters, try adding * to the end of these letters.
Example: My search results could include surgeon or surgery and still be relevant. I need to find articles that include surgery, surgeon, and surgical.
Search term: surg* will give results that begin in surg and end in anything, including surgeon, surgery, surgical, surge, etc.
Search for phrases by using quotation marks.
Putting a set of words in quotation marks will pull them together and find them as a phrase.
Example: “Book of Job” will find information about the Book of Job in that order. If the article isn’t relevant to the “Book of Job” it will not come up.
Searching for Book of Job without quotes will find things related to book/books and/or job...this could be Job in the bible, someone named Job, or information about job availability.
Quotes are only useful if you NEED to search for a set of words together as a phrase. Examples of words that make sense to search as a phrase include words commonly used together, like "physical education," "mindfulness meditation," etc.