Journalism - Missourian Newspaper Library: Search Tips

The Missourian is currently being archived in a system called MerlinOne – not to be confused with the Merlin Library Catalog in use by the MU Libraries.

Login:  merlin   password:  missourian#1

What’s in the archive and what isn’t

The daily print version is in the archive. Also in the archive are online only stories that run on the columbiamissourian.com web site.

Vox Magazine print pages are archived from 2004 to present. Online articles are archived from 2015. The Vox Magazine web site at www.voxmagazine.com has a search box on the left-hand side right under “Inside Vox” to find older online articles.

Don’t get too specific. Start out with one or two words and then add terms to limit the results if needed. For example, if you’re looking for a person’s name, just enter the last name unless it’s a very common one. The reason for this is that if you enter a first name and middle initial, perhaps the story you’re looking for didn’t use the middle initial. The archive will look for everything you enter – if that middle initial isn’t there, you won’t find anything. MerlinOne assumes there is an “and” between two words, so you don’t need to enter the word “and.” If you want to find two or more words together, enclose them in parentheses. Don’t use articles such as “for,” “the,” etc.

Try different search terms if you don’t find anything at first.

If you need help, please come by the library. We have the software version of MerlinOne which allows us to do more refined searching than the web version.

Boolean Search Tips

In the Merlin archives the “and” is implied and you do not have to type it between the search terms.

• Use the word OR to search for articles containing either of two or more words, e.g. “Kennedy Space” OR Shuttle

• Use the word AND to search for articles containing combinations of words, though MerlinOne will insert AND automatically between words outside of quotes.
  • Group terms with AND and OR using parentheses, e.g.
    (“kennedy space” or shuttle) and astronaut**.

• Add the word NOT after the first term to exclude some items e.g.
  kennedy not space

• Search for all common variants of a word by ending it with two asterisks, e.g. swim** will find ‘swam’ and ‘swimming’.
  • Use an asterisk to replace zero or more characters at the end or middle of a word to search, or a question mark to represent a single character, e.g. wine? finds wines, wined but not wine or winery.)

• Use the word LIKE before a term to do a phonetic search, e.g.
  LIKE gustafsen
  to find items containing Gustavson, gustafson, gustafsen, gustavsen, etc.)

• Use the word NEAR to find words within 5 words of each other, e.g.
  protest near encampment
  • Modify how close the words have to be next to one another by inserting a number after NEAR, e.g.
    protest near 10 encampment
    to search for them being within 10 words of each other)
  • Specify that the words have to be in a specific order using THEN, e.g.
    kennedy then space