*Science & Mathematics: Performing a Basic Search

How to Guide:

1. to get started, navigate to the Saints Search homepage
   1. you can also find a search box on the Library’s Homepage
2. in the search box, type one or more words that you are looking for
3. if necessary, adjust the search scope of the query. available options include:
   1. Saint Martin’s and Summit – if you want to show all available results (recommended)
   2. Saint Martin’s – if you don’t want to show results requiring interlibrary loan
   3. Articles – if you want to narrow your search results by article, e.g., excluding books
   4. Course Reserves – if you or your professor has placed a title on course reserve with the Library. Select this option to quickly find the title in question
   5. Abbey – if you wish to only view items within the Abbey’s collection
4. select the magnifying glass icon, or “Search” button, located to the right of the search box
5. Review search results

Supporting information

Default searching

using the search box to perform a basic search, without using additional operators or techniques, will automatically provide results that contain all of the entered terms. Note, by entering just phrases or words the query will return results that contain the key words irrespective of the proximity of the terms within that item. In other words, if you entered the terms civil engineering the search will return all items contain the terms civil and engineering, regardless of their location within that item.

Search by phrase

to search for a specific phrase, place the desired phrase within “” (quotation marks).

Operators

you can include the operators AND, OR, and NOT to specify the operation between search lines. Left-to-right precedence is applied between search phrases as well as in the case of multiple operators.

By default, the entire query is treated as a single search phrase. For example, if you enter civil engineering best practices, these four words are treated as a single phrase.

However, if you use the AND operator you can tell the software to treat civil engineering and best practices as two separate phrases, returning search results in which both phrases my not be close together. For example, the phrase would be entered as follows: civil engineering AND best practices.

( )

Placing terms within parenthesis allow you to group specific terms or phrases, thereby altering the search’s order of precedence.

Wildcards

? - enter a question mark to perform a single character wildcard search. For example, enter wom?n to search for records containing woman, women, etc.

* - enter an asterisk to perform a multiple character wildcard search. For example, type cultur* to search for records containing culture, cultural, culturally, etc.

Grouping terms within a query

you can group terms or phrases with multiple operators to further refine your query by using parenthesis. This will allow you to specify the order of the multiple operators. When using multiple operators, it is very important you group the desired terms with parentheses.

For example, if you want to search for civil engineering and sustainable, sustainability or green you would enter the query as follows:
“civil engineering” AND (sustainab* OR green)

If you do not clarify precedence with parentheses, the software will instead group the query as follows:
(“civil engineering AND sustainab*) OR green

Step 1

to get started, navigate to the Saint Search homepage

As seen from the Library Homepage

Step 2

in the search box, type one or more words that you are looking for

As seen from the Library Homepage

Step 3

if necessary, adjust the search scope of the query

As seen from the Library Homepage

Step 4

select the magnifying glass icon, or “Search” button, located to the right of the search box

As seen from the Library Homepage

Step 5

Review search results