Exact Phrase Searches

Searching for Exact Names or Phrases

To search for an exact name or phrase, surround it with quotation marks (" "). The text string must be matched exactly for it to be found.

You can prevent expansion (or stemming) of words by enclosing them in quotation marks (" "). If the quotation marks enclose more than one word, those words must appear in the exact order entered.

For example, entering the phrase "child psychology magazine" would not match the phrase children's psychology magazine because "child" is not expanded to children's. Similarly, psychology of a child would not match the query, because the terms child and psychology are out of order.

To prevent the expansion of multiple words, but avoid the word-order constraint, enclose each word separately.

For example, enter "Justice" "Department" to find both Justice Department and Department of Justice.

You also can use quotation marks around phrases in Boolean queries to restrict the order of words you find.

For example, entering child psychology would match psychology of a child,
but entering "child psychology” would not produce the same match because of the word-order constraint.

Searching for Groups of Words

Words within parentheses are searched first as a group, instead of as individual words. Parentheses are effective when searching for either:

• Multiple related terms that may not be in the dictionary:

For example:

( JFK or "John Kennedy" or Kennedy) elections

would return matches for:

JFK Elections, John Kennedy Elections or Kennedy Elections.

• Multiple terms that may not be linked to one another:

For example:

(motorcycle AND car OR boat) shows

would return matches for combined motorcycle and car shows, as well as boat trade shows.