An exact search looks for your exact text, from beginning to end, whether your search text is multiple words or just one word. An exact search is useful when you know the text precisely; for example, when searching for titles such as It or Jazz. If your library offers other databases to search, they are available to select for an exact search.
Case, spaces, punctuation - Letter case, multiple spaces, and punctuation are ignored. Omit hyphens in numbers. However, you can include the following characters if they immediately precede or follow a letter or number (no space between): + # % $
Multiple words - Word order matters. An exact search looks for your text exactly as you enter it. If you are searching for an author, enter the author’s name in this format: last name, first name*, because that is the way the name appears in the catalog records. Include the wild card character * (see below) in case the name has more characters, such as a middle initial. As another example, if you search for a title with the search text gone with, you will find only gone with, not gone with the wind. You can use the wildcard character * to represent other characters. If you search for a title with the search text gone with*, you might find gone with the wind and gone without a trace.
Wildcard characters - You can type a part of a word and use a wildcard character. The wildcard character asterisk (*) represents the rest of the word. For example, if you type King*, the results include words such as King, Kingsley, and Kingford. The wildcard character question mark (?) represents exactly one character. For example, wom?n finds woman and women. If the question mark occurs at the end of a word, it does not act as a wildcard character, so you can find titles like what color is your parachute? Also, if you type a backslash character \ before any wildcard character, the wildcard character is treated as text.
To do an exact search:
Your library may provide a digital collection that you can search and access online in the same way that you search for other materials. Materials in the collection may include images, video clips, sound files, and text files. If you want to restrict your search results to digital collection materials, select Digital Collection in the Limit by box.
If you type your search term and then select more search options before clicking Go, you will need to re-type your search term.
Detailed material types are defined by the library for the physical items the library owns. The formats in the Limit by box on the search bar refer to general formats and types of materials associated with title entries in the catalog. You can limit a search by format or detailed material type, but not both. If you selected a format in the Limit by box when you set up your search, your format choice is canceled when you set a material type.
The search bar displays a highlighted message that options have been set. To change them, click the Change link in the highlighted Options have been set message, set new values and click Set Search Options. Then do a new search.
To reset the search options to their original values, click the Reset link in the highlighted Options have been set message. The search is done again, using the original values.
Search options retain their settings until you reset them or go to the home page. The highlighted message Options have been set on the search bar indicates that search options are set to values different from the usual values.
Your selections remain until you reset them. To reset the search databases, click Reset.
If the search is successful, you see your search results. If no matches are found, you see a message. You may also see a Did you mean suggestion. You can click the suggestion to search for the suggested term.
If you selected remote databases to search, a status bar indicates how many results were retrieved and how many results are pending. To load the remainder of the results, click Add Pending Results. You can click Search Status to see the number of results for all the selected databases. If you have selected or entered a search Limit by option that a remote database cannot use, results from this database are returned based on the basic search terms you entered, and a message indicates that the limiters were not used in the remote database search.