Search Tips
Useful Search Tips for Destiny Users
Basic Search Tips:
- Keyword searches titles, authors, subjects, series and notes.
- Title looks at all of the titles in the catalog
- Author looks at all of the author and illustrator information
- Subject looks at all of the subjects in the catalog
- Series looks at all of the series information in the catalog
- Look in helps you look for items outside of NCS
- My Searches keeps a history of your searches
- Literary and State Award Winners can be found by choosing an option for the Search Award Winners list.
Power Search:
If a Basic Search returns too many or too few results, Power Search lets you look for search terms by Keyword, Title, Author, Subject, Series or Note. These options let you specify how Destiny should treat each term. You can also define the Boolean relationship between each term.
- Look in helps you look for items outside of your site
- Material type helps you find only one particular type of material
- Publication year helps you find materials from a specific time frame
- Award Winners helps you limit your results to titled that have won either a state and/or national literary award
Defining your Search Terms:
All these words helps you find materials that contain ALL of the words in the search term. The more words you enter, the smaller the search results will be.
- Any of these words helps you find materials that include at least one of the words in the search term. The more words you enter, the larger the search results will be.
- Use Starts with when you have a search term that contains or starts with stop words, or when a title or name is very long. This search won’t ignore any of your words.
- This exact phrase helps you find materials that include a particular phrase. Stop words are still disregarded in this type of search.
Using Boolean Operators:
- And returns titles that mention both search terms
- Or returns titles that mention either or both search terms
- Not returns titles about one search term that doesn’t mention the other
Important Terms to Know when Using Power Search:
- Stop Words: The following common words are ignored when searching
a, and, are, 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
If you need to use these words in your search term, select “Starting with these words.”
- Truncation: Add an asterisk (*) to the end of a word to find plurals or words with a variety of endings.
Example:
electron* finds:
electron
electrons
electronic
electronics
- Wildcards: Substitute ? for one or more letters to find a variety of forms or when you’re unsure of the spelling. A ? matches any single character in or at the end of a word.
Examples:
a?sorption finds:
absorption
adsorption
Johns?n finds:
Johnsen
Johnson