Title (Start of Title) | Title Keywords | Keywords | Common Words | Diacritics | Punctuation
Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT) | Phrases | Wildcards | Page Length Limit Options | Bookmarking Database URLs

The Title (start of title) search seeks matches for initial words appearing in titles as left-anchored phrases.  The order in which words are input affects retrieval.  The last word is wildcarded on the right. For example:

art

retrieves:

Art abstracts
ARTbibliographies modern
ARTFL: American research on the treasure of the French language
ArticleFirst
[etc.]

The Title Keywords search seeks matches for words appearing in titles. The order in which words are input does not affect retrieval. For example:

women american

retrieves:

African American women: a biographical dictionary
Native American women: a biographical dictionary
North American women's letters and diaries
[etc.]

More information about keyword searching: Boolean (AND, OR, NOT); Phrases; Wildcards

The Keywords search seeks matches for words appearing anywhere in the "More Info" pages that describe the databases. For example:

chile argentina

retrieves:

Hapi, Hispanic American periodicals index
Latin America  data base
Latin American periodicals tables of contents (LAPTOC)
[etc.]

More information about keyword searching: Boolean (AND, OR, NOT); Phrases; Wildcards

Common words such as articles, prepositions, and pronouns are stoplisted, i.e., not indexed for searching. If you input stoplisted words, they will be ignored; only non-stoplisted words will be searched.

Stoplisted words: a, an, and, are, as, at, be, but, by, for, if, in, into, is, it, no, not, of, on, or, s, such, t, that, the, their, then, there, these, they, this, to, was, will, with

Ampersands are ignored.

Diacritics are indexed for searching. If you input diacritics, they will not be ignored.

In general, punctuation is ignored. An apostrophe followed by an "s" is ignored. For example, whether you input women or women's, your search will retrieve the same results.

AND
When more than one word is input, the search is processed as a Boolean "AND" search: only those databases described by all the words present are retrieved.

OR 
Use the Boolean "OR" operator to find databases described by any of the words.  To do this, input "OR" in uppercase letters between the words to be searched. For example:

business OR economics

NOT
Use the Boolean "NOT" operator to find databases not described by a particular word. To do this, input "NOT" in uppercase letters before the word to be excluded.  Alternatively, input a minus sign "-" directly before the word to be excluded. For example:

science NOT medical

or:

science -medical

or, to exclude multiple words:

science NOT medical NOT medicine

or:

science -medical -medicine

Use quotation marks ('') to find databases described by exact phrases.  For example,

"global warming"

Use a wildcard (i.e., a truncation symbol) to find databases described by words with variant endings.  Wildcards cannot be used at the beginning of a word.

To use a wildcard, input a question mark (?) for a single character or an asterisk (*) for more than one character.  For example:

wom?n

retrieves:

woman, women

child*

retrieves:

child, children, childhood [etc.]

You can determine the number of titles you wish to see displayed on each search results page: 10, 25, 50, 100 or "all results."   The default number of titles displayed per search results page is "all results" -- this allows you to scroll through all the retrieved titles on a single page.

Since many database URLs are long, complex, and often changing, we have set up a system of URLs that will not change over time. These links begin with http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/cul/resolve. Please bookmark those.

Example: