Connecting your search terms.

Note that the results of different searches aren't necessarily comparable.

By default, all terms in a search are combined as a phrase first and then combined with the AND operator.

health children

will find results that contain the phrase "health children" first, followed by results that discuss health and children in the same item.

If you prefer, you can put AND between the search terms as long as you type it in all caps:

health AND children

To get more results, you can use the OR operator.

Note that the results of different searches aren't necessarily comparable.

microcircuits OR nanocircuits

will return items that contain either term. Don’t forget to capitalize OR. You may also try

"teacher education” OR “educator training”

To exclude items, use the NOT operator.

animal NOT dog

will find results that do not include the word dog.

The question mark (?) will match any one character. For example:

Ols?n

will find results for “Olsen” or “Olson”.

The asterisk (*) will match zero or more characters within a word or at the end of a word. For example:

Ch*ter

will find results for “Charter”, “Character”, and “Chapter”.

When used at the end of a word, such as

Temp*

it will match all suffixes “Temptation”, “Temple” and “Temporary”.

Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search.

The left sidebar on the results page offers plenty of options to shorten your results list so it is more specific to your search needs. For example:

In-person at SLC Library focuses your search results on physical books and videos available for borrowing.

Peer-reviewed Scholarly Journals will narrow your search results to articles from publications that are peer-reviewed (which by default are scholarly). Please note that this may include not peer-reviewed types of content such as editorials and book reviews from a peer-reviewed publication.

You can select multiple options to narrow your original search results. For example, search for scholarly articles published within the last year on education in Ontario.

Exploring a Topic with Virtual Browse.

Items in the library provide the option to browse up to 100 items located near the specific item on a virtual shelf. The system uses the call number index to create the virtual browse list.

Search by field.

If you want to find specific information sources, you can try searching specific fields such as title, author and subject in the Advanced Search option.