MERLIN and many other databases use the * symbol to indicate truncation.
Marxis* will search for:
MERLIN and some other databases also use word-internal wildcards:
workingm?n will search for:
When looking for... | Use |
Books about a person | Subject, e.g., Bakunin, Mikhail |
Books about an organization | Subject, e.g., International Workingmen's Association |
Books about an event | Subject, e.g., French Revolution (watch for "see" references) |
Books including something about a person-maybe a chapter or part |
Keyword(s), e.g. Saint-Simon |
Books about an idea | Keyword(s) Examples: (freedom or liberty) and 19th century and philosoph* (wom?n or femin*) and John Stuart Mill |
Books on X that mention Y |
MERLIN: use X and Y as Keywords |
Look for your historical figures as both AUTHORS and KEYWORDS, and, if available, as SUBJECTS.
If the author wrote in a language other than English, you can locate English translations by limiting language to English after running the search.
Look for ways to limit dates, especially in the UM LIBRARIES CATALOG, JSTOR and Google Books.
A search for boys AND China or an "All the Words" search for boys China will only give you results containing BOTH words.
Use AND or All the words searches to narrow or focus your results.
A search for heart OR cardio* or an "Any of the Words" search for heart cardio* will give you results containing EITHER word.
Use OR or Any of the Words for synonyms or closely related words.