Multiple words within quotes are searched as a phrase.
"economic policy"
"thurston county"
Truncation
Use * to search for different endings of the word at the same time. Words may be
right-hand truncated using an asterisk. Use a single asterisk * to truncate from
1-5 characters. Use a double asterisk ** for open-ended truncation.
environment* retrieves environment, environmental, environmentalism, etc.
Operators
The AND search is the default search. The Catalog will return results containing
all the words typed in the keyword text box.
washington art*
Use OR to require that either term be present.
olympia OR thurston
Use AND NOT to exclude the second term.
desert AND NOT mount
Use parentheses to group combined terms.
washington AND (ski* or snowboard*)
Proximity
Use "near" to find words within 10 words of each other in the same field.
washington near teachers
Use "within #" to find terms which occur within # words of each other in the field.
dream* within 5 interpret*
Fields
Use a:, t:, s:, or n: to search the author, title, subject or notes parts of records.
Note that there is no space between a, t, or s and colon. Truncation (*) cannot
be used in field searching.
a:washington and s:handicapped s:criticism and (n:romeo or s:romeo)
Searching Boolean Operator words
Any of the Boolean operators may be used as a search term by enclosing it in double
quotes.
