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SEARCHING FOR MUSIC USING THE ONLINE CATALOG

KEYWORD SEARCHING: USING TRUNCATION IN THE NEW ONLINE CATALOG

TRUNCATION: Using search terms that have been shortened to retrieve a greater number of responses. A "wild card" can be added to the search term to indicate the presence of one or more characters in the search term.

In the NEW online catalog ("iLink" or "Sirsi,") there are two characters that can be used for wildcards after truncating a search term.

Substituting one character

The ? symbol is used as a substitute for a SINGLE missing character in a search term, usually when you are unsure of a spelling or when you want to find two forms of one word.

Example: wom?n

iLink locates records containing either "woman" or "women."

Truncation and substituting multiple characters

The $ symbol is used to truncate search terms and can represent a single characters, many characters, or no characters. If you follow the $ symbol with a number, iLink limits the number of characters matched. When more than one term in a search expression is truncated, each term is searched for all variations.

Example: Jame$

iLink locates the specified records containing the terms "Jame," "James," "Jamison," and "Jamerton."