Wildcard Symbol

One of the biggest problems for searching is knowing the correct spelling. Two tricks to help with this problem are the wildcard symbol or asterisk (*) and the stop symbol or vertical bar ( | ).

Wildcard Symbol

When searching by SUBJECT, TITLE, or AUTHOR, you can use a wildcard symbol (*) to retrieve words with alternate endings.

Example:	solz* retrieves the author Solzhenitsyn.
Example:	snow* retrieves subjects such as Snow, Snowboarding, Snowden, Snowy owl, etc.

Punctuation for wildcards varies by database. The most common use is the asterisk *, however, !, ?, $, are also used. Read the database help section to know what wildcard to use.

Example:

garden* retrieves words in which "garden" is a root (garden, gardener, gardening, gardens, etc.).

Finding Plurals

Wildcards work for plurals, too. When searching by TITLE, SUBJECT, or AUTHOR, you can search singular and plural forms simultaneously by using the root word followed by a wildcard.

In the WORDS search use * to shorten the word to its root.

Or, in the WORDS search, combine singular and plural terms with "OR".