Search Tips
- Subject Headings. We generally don't use the word "disability" or "disabilities" as subject headings. however, if the item is about a specific type of disability, we will specify that. For example: "physical disabilities" will appear in the catalogue record for an item about physical disabilities specifically.
- Phrases: quotation marks around phrases will ensure the words are searched as a phrase. for example:
"built environment"
if quotation marks are not used, the computer will also find records where the word built and the word environment are found separately from each other. - Boolean searching: AND / OR / NOT in your search string will increase the relevance of results.
for example:
"information AND accessibility"
finds items with both the word information and the word accessibility in the catalogue record
"intellectual OR learning"
finds items with either the phrase intellectual disabilities or the learning disabilities in the catalogue record
"rehabilitation NOT employment"
finds items about subjects like physical rehabilitation but not vocational rehabilitation - Date ranges are unfortunately not supported in our search function because of our software but a specific year or range of years can be searched.
- Truncation: the asterisk (*) represents any group of characters, as well as no character.
for example:
human*
finds human, humans, humanity, humane, etc. - Wildcard: the question mark (?) represents any single character.
for example:
deinstitutionali?ation
finds both deinstitutionalisation and deinstutionalization - Develop your search by combining the types of searches used above.
for example:
information and accessib*
finds items with the word information and the words accessibility or accessible in the catalogue record