Skip to Main Content
Ask CWU Libraries
CWU Libraries Home

UNIV 101 - Academic Advising Seminar

OneSearch

OneSearch

Search Operators

Search operators help clarify, narrow, or broaden a search. Here are tips for using them in your searches:

Quotes

Quotes can be used to identify and search for a specific phrasing of words strung together. Quotes can be very useful for searching titles. For example,

The Color Purple Searches all instances of the term "color" and "purple", ranking instances where they are together higher
"The Color Purple"    Looks for instances for the entire phrase "The Color Purple", and when those words exist in that order


Boolean Operators

These narrow or broaden a search. Using all-caps in OneSearch is important; you'll get different results by using lowercase.

Puppy AND Kitten  --- Returns instances where both "puppy" and "kitten" are mentioned in the record

Puppy OR Kitten  --- Returns instances where either "puppy" or "kitten" are mentioned in the record

Puppy NOT Kitten --- Returns instances of the word "puppy", but not where "kitten" is included in the record

Created by the librarians at Northwest Arkansas Community College Library. See their guide for other search hacks: http://library.nwacc.edu/search-hacks/home

Wildcards

Wildcards can be used to allow for multiple characters in a word. You use a wildcard operator to replace a character in a word, or a word ending.
 
Single character wildcards: ?

Example: wom?n = women or woman

Multi-character wildcards: *

Example: explain* = explained, explaining, etc.

Citation Guides

Finding a citation through OneSearch is simple and easy to do. However, it is recommended that you check these citations for accuracy before using them in your work.