OVRC Search Tips

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.

1. Note on the use of stopwords: Because the search engine does not recognize stopwords, your search term must be enclosed in quotes OR you can drop the stopword from the title or phrase. For example, when searching for a title containing the word "to":

Stopwords include the following: an, and, aspects, but, co, corp, etc, for, from, if, in, inc, into, is, it, its, jr, ltd, of, on, or, that, the, to, with.3. 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., in addition to ancient Rome. 4. 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. (Note: You may also enter multiple words without the OR operator.) 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*.5. Try using synonyms for your original words. For example, enter "nervous breakdown" or "mental breakdown" or "nervous disorder" or "mental instability".6. Check your spelling. If you type abortoin instead of abortion, your search won’t find any matches. 7. 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. (It literally means "find time "within 1 word of" travel.) This narrows your results from hundreds of matches to a few dozen matches, assuming the phrase that you typed is not too common.

Capitalization
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:

Punctuation
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:

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

Ampersand. Ampersands (&) are not recognized by the search engine. Instead use the W (Within) proximity operator. (See Search Operators below to learn more about proximity operators.)

Truncation (Wildcard) Characters
The * (asterisk) and ? (question mark) and ! (exclamation point) are used to search for words or numbers sharing a similar pattern. The * and ? 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 * (standing for any number of characters) 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 exactly one 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; and psych????y matches either psychology or psychiatry but not psychotherapy.

The ! point stands for one or no characters. For example, analo!! matches analog or analogs, but not analogous or analogue.

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. Please note, however, that if an operator appears in a title you are searching for, such as The Road Not Taken, it will still be interpreted as a search operator. This may lead to irrelevant results. If you are searching for a title that contains a search operator, enclose the title in quotation marks.

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.

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:

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

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).

Field Length
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.