This advice will help you improve your search results:

1.Use at least two or three search terms. By using more search terms to narrow your search, you can locate essays that fit your information needs better. The following sample results are hypothetical:

Note: By default, the search engine finds only those essays containing all of the words you specify. See Search Operators below to learn how to use the AND, OR, NOT, and proximity operators.

2.Be specific. If you’re looking for information about ancient Rome, enter both of those words in your search. If you enter just Rome, your search may give you essays that discuss modern Rome or Rome, N.Y., but not ancient Rome.

3.Find an exact phrase with the help of the W operator. You can narrow your searches by requiring that the search terms appear as a phrase in the order that you typed them. For example, if you are looking for time travel, search for these words as a phrase, time W1 travel. This narrows your results from hundreds of matches to a few dozen matches, assuming the phrase that you typed is not too common.

4.You can also mix phrases and single search terms in the search box. For example "ancient Rome" AND Caesar.

5.Broaden your search by using OR. For example, racism or prejudice. Unless you tell the search engine otherwise, it finds only those essays containing all of the words that you specify in the order you have specified. By inserting OR between your search words, you’ll find documents that contain as few as one of your requested words. Using OR will increase the number of essays that are found; use OR if your search isn’t finding enough essays.

6.Use plural or other word endings. For example, if you are looking for discussions of murder, search for various forms of the word using the OR operator as the connector, e.g. murder or murders or murderer or murderous. It is also possible, depending on the desired search term, to use the truncation (or wildcard) feature to retrieve both singular and plural forms of a word, e.g. murder*.

7.Try using synonyms for your original words. For example, "nervous breakdown" or "mental breakdown" or "nervous disorder" or "mental instability".

8.Check your spelling. If you type litrature instead of literature, your search won’t find any matches.

The search engine is not case sensitive. That is, use of capitalization does not affect the results of a search. For example, the following keyword searches are considered the same:

• astronaut and spaceship or "outer space"
• astronaut AND spaceship OR "outer space"
• Astronaut and Spaceship or "Outer Space"
• astroNAUT and spACEship or "oUtEr SpAcE"

Double quotes. The use of double quotes (" ") around a phrase may be used to make the search results more precise. Use of double quotes yields essays in which the words appear adjacent to one another and in the exact order in which you typed them. For example, searching for the phrase gothic romance yields any essays that contain both words in that order (gothic before romance). Using double quotes around the phrase "gothic romance" yields any essay that contains the exact phrase.

When a search yields an error message, try enclosing the search term in double quotes.

Hyphen. A hyphen (-) used between two words is considered part of the term. If you are searching for a word or phrase that normally contains a hyphen, include the hyphen and enclose the word or phrase in quotes:

• "nineteen-thirties"
• "self-doubt"

Apostrophe. Apostrophes (’) are not recognized by the search engine and should be deleted from search terms.

• Salem Lot (instead of Salem’s Lot)
• Chatterly (instead of Chatterly’s)

Ampersand. Ampersands (&) are not recognized by the search engine. When an ampersand is integral to a search term, it is best to drop the ampersand and use the W (Within) proximity operator. (See Search Operators below to learn more about proximity operators.)

• Tulips W2 Chimneys (means "tulips within two words of chimneys"; instead of Tulips & Chimneys)
• Socialism Radicalism W2 Nostalgia (instead of Socialism, Radicalism & Nostalgia)

The * (asterisk) and ? (question mark) are used to search for words or numbers sharing a similar pattern. The * and ? replace alphabetical and numerical characters.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The * and ? may not be used in date fields (such as Birth or Death year). Instead, use Date Range searching.

The * is placed at the end of the term’s root. The search retrieves all words sharing the same root. For example, the term faith* retrieves essays that contain the words faith, faithful, or faiths. 

The ? is used to replace a single character within a word to retrieve various forms of that word. For example, the term wom?n retrieves essays that contain either woman or women. IMPORTANT NOTE: Search terms that use the ? wildcard character will return no results for searches that are set to be ordered by relevancy, the default sort order. To change your sort order, (1) perform any search without using the ? character, (2) select a sort order other than Score (Document Title, Source, and Type are available), and (3) select New Search in the left-side navigation bar. This will enable you to use the ? wildcard character and will also change your default sort order for all future searches until you reset it. Upcoming GaleNet enhancements will make these steps unnecessary.

Date Ranges

A date range is used to search for multiple years in date fields (such as Birth or Death Year fields).

Search Operators

The Boolean search operators AND, OR, NOT, and proximity operators may be used to refine your search. Whether the operators are typed in uppercase or lowercase does not affect the search.

AND. Use the AND search operator to retrieve documents that contain both of the specified search terms. This operator places no condition on where the terms are found in relation to one another; however, both terms have to appear somewhere in the field you are searching. For example, a full text search for apples AND bananas will find any essay that contains mention both of apples and bananas.

OR. Use the OR search operator to retrieve documents that contain one or both specified search terms. This operator places no condition on where the terms are found in relation to one another; however, one or both terms must appear somewhere in the field you are searching. For example, a full text search for apples OR bananas will find essays that mention apples, essays that mention bananas, and essays that mention both types of fruit.

NOT. Use the NOT search operator to retrieve documents that do not contain the specified term. For example, a full text search for apples NOT bananas will find essays that mention apples but not bananas.

PROXIMITY. The proximity operators W (within) and N (next to) may be used to refine your search:

The W operator will find essays containing the specified words in the specified order within the number of words you indicate. For example, old w4 sea finds documents that contain the word old within four words of the word sea, and old must precede sea.

The N operator locates documents containing the words you specify within the number of words you specify, but the words can be in any order. For example, apples N4 bananas finds documents that contain the words apples and bananas within four words of each other, regardless of their order (that is, bananas could precede or follow apples).

Parentheses. The operators described above each operate on either simple terms (words or phrases) or a more complex query delimited by parentheses ( ). Parentheses allow you to construct very powerful queries. For example:

• "pulp fiction" AND ((detective AND crime) OR hard-boiled)
• ("cowboy*" OR ("gold rush" AND california)) AND (18?? OR nineteenth century)

Boolean operators are applied in the order in which they appear. Therefore, the following searches are equivalent:

• apples AND bananas OR oranges
• (apples AND bananas) OR oranges

The length of any given field is not limited to the window you see on the screen. As a search term or terms is keyed, the text will continue to scroll to the left, so that you can see the search expression as it is being keyed.