One Word:

The search engine will search for what you type as a whole, complete word. For example, if you type the word, surf, the search engine will look for surf. It will not look for surfing or surfer. If you want to search for all words that begin s u r f, then use a wildcard.

Wildcard:

If you want to search for words that begin with certain letters, you can use the asterisk as a wildcard. For example, surf* will search for surf, surfing, surfs, and any other words beginning with the letters s u r f .

Several keywords:

If you enter multiple terms in the search box, the search engine will look for documents that contain all of the terms. In other words, the search is performed as if you put and between each of the terms.

Phrase:

To search for a phrase, put the phrase in quotations. For example, "Pacific Avenue".

Boolean Operators:

You may use the Boolean operators: and, or, not in your search.

and
This operator tells the search engine that both words must be present in the document. For example, boardwalk and swanton asks the search engine to find documents that contain both words in them.

OR
The operator OR acts like "either." For example, boardwalk or swanton tells the search engine to look for documents that have either word in them, but not necessarily both.

NOT
The NOT operator works as a filter, getting rid of documents that contain certain words. For example, boardwalk not swanton tells the search engine to look for documents that contain boardwalk only and eliminate those that also contain swanton.

Parenthesis
When you have a complex search, include groupings in parenthesis.For example, railroad and (swanton or hihn) will cause the search engine to search for documents that contain the word railroad and either swanton or hihn.

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