Using the UNH Durham Library Search Box

When researching your topic, you might come to a point where the keywords and search string you use to search get really long and complicated.

The Advanced Search lets you build those same search strings but without using the AND, OR, and NOT operators.

By default, Advanced Search gives you two places to put in your search terms. You can split up your keywords in a way that does the same thing as using AND, OR, and NOT. Instead of typing those operators, you pick the one you need from the dropdown menu.

If you are researching the opera Billy Budd, you could put "Billy Budd" on the top line and opera on the second line; this performs the same search as "Billy Budd" AND opera.

However, Advanced Search gives you even more options to make your search specific than a basic search using AND, OR, and NOT. For example, in the dropdown box that says "Any Field", you can select which part of the item's information you want to search. Normally, the search finds results that have your keywords in any part of the item's details, such as the Author or Title. With Advanced Search, you can narrow down to specific details, such as just searching for the ISSN of a journal, or things written by a certain author but not about that author.

In the example above, I only wanted materials where the title starts with the phrase "Billy Budd" but where opera could be anywhere.

If needed, I could also limit which search scope I wanted to use, the type of material, the language, or the publication date range.