Searching techniques
You don't need to use any special search techniques on Central Search, but you can get more accurate results with these tips:
1. Narrow your search as much as you can. For example: a search on "psychology" will get too many hits. Narrow your search to a topic within psychology, such as searching "dementia or Alzheimer's disease" to get the results you need.
2. Use correct spelling. For example: a search on "Alzhimers" will result in a message saying "Did you mean Alzheimer's?" and suggest the correct spelling, but if your spelling is too far off the correct spelling, you won't get the results you need.
3. Use phrasing. To search for a phrase, put quotation marks around it, for example: "global warming."
4. Use wildcard characters. To search for a single character within a word, use a question mark, for example: wom?n to search for women or woman. An asterisk will pick up multiple endings, such as using cultur* to search for culture, cultures, or cultural.
5. Go directly to Central Search. You can find more searching options on the Central Search results page. To go there directly (without doing a search first), click on the Central Search icon.
You will see tabs for Books & More, Articles, and Course Reserves - you can use these options to narrow your search
to the catalog (for books, music and media in our library), or limit your article search to subject sets (for finding articles in databases
specific to your topic), or limit to Reserves (items set aside by your professor for your class to use).
If the results are not giving you what you need, use Libguides to find resources for your topic.