Basics of Searching in Quicksearch

Use Quicksearch to search across Orbis and Morris (Books+), Articles+, and Digital Collections.  You will probably get a very large set of results, only the first 20 of which will be displayed (10 from Books+ and 10 from Articles+ and Digital Collections).  If a group of results looks interesting, click on "View and limit all XXX results" link, and you will see details of the set.

To browse only the results from Orbis and Morris, for example, with no Articles+ or Digital Collections results, click on the indicator to "View and limit all XXX results."  Once you have selected a set, facets and other functionality will be available for you to further refine your search.

You can do the same thing to explore only relevant results in Articles+ or Digital Collections.

Tip 1.  Quicksearch routinely provides "stemming" for common endings to words, that is, common present and past tenses for verbs are added or removed so that a search on the word 'work', for example, will retrieve records that contain the words 'work', 'works', 'working', and 'worked' but not 'worker' or 'workers' (although a search of 'worker' retrieves records with the words 'worker' and 'workers').  Stemming is not performed for proper nouns.

Tip 2.  The results of your search may or may not contain all of the search terms that you used if you use more than 1 or 2 words (or quoted phrases).

  • If there are 1-2 words or quoted phrases, all are required.
  • If there are 3-5 words or quoted phrases, all but one is required.
  • If there are 6 words or quoted phrases, all but two are required.

You can control these results by using the following special search syntax:

  • Use a '+' immediately preceding the term (or quoted phrase) to instruct the system to return only records that include the term(s).
  • Use a '-' immediately preceding the term (or quoted phrase) to instruct the system to exclude all records that include the term(s).
  • Use quotation marks around a phrase to search only that exact phrase as typed.  For example, "united nations" +law will return many fewer and more relevant results about the United Nations and law than will a search without quotation marks and the '+' sign.
  • Stop words (the, a, and, or, etc.) are removed from a search unless they are included in a phrase in quotation marks.

Basics of Searching in Quicksearch

After this selection you will see only the results from Books+. Facets and other functionality will now be available.

You can do the same thing for Articles+.