Choosing your Search Terms

Enter search terms on separate lines e.g., enter title of film on the top line, director's last name below, so as to articulate your search request. Use Boolean Operators to improve your search:

The search you enter can be very simple, without using any expert techniques.  

If you are a more experienced researcher, Basic Search also allows you to use search operators that broaden or narrow your results.  

Search operators are a set of commands that can be used in almost every search engine, database, or online catalogue such as AND, OR, and NOT. These must be in capital letters to work. Other operators include parentheses, truncation, and phrases.  

• Learn more about search operators.  

• For more ways to narrow your search, use the Advanced Search function. 

Your initial set of results will be automatically sorted by relevance, determined by: 

• Frequency of search terms matched in the record
• Hierarchy of search terms in the record
• Proximity of search terms to one another 
• Search terms matched in author, title, subject, or date field

You may want to change this default setting to sort in other ways. Alternative sort options include Date-newest, Date-oldest, Title, or Author. Each of these options are available through the Sort By dropdown menu. 

There are a few filtering options immediately available above your search results:

• Online
• Physical copy
• Peer-reviewed articles
• Open access 

For a complete list of filters, you’ll need to select the “All Filters” button. 

Citation trails may be available for some articles in LibrarySearch. A citation trail is one way to describe a search that:

• Examines the bibliography, references or works cited section of a specific article to identify relevant sources published previously. This is sometimes called Backwards Searching.
• Identifies any sources that have cited or referenced a specific article since that article's publication. This is sometimes called Forwards Searching. 

When citation trails are available, the buttons will be visible immediately below the article information in the results list, or at the bottom of the full record. 

Click "Articles citing this" for relevant sources published since or "Cited in this article" to find relevant sources published previously. One trail leads to sources that cite the work (Articles citing this). The other trail lists the references cited in the work (Cited in this article).