| Tarleton State University Libraries |
Unit
4 |
| CREATING
WILDCARD SEARCHES |
 |
|
Wildcard
Searches (aka Substitution)
are similar to truncation searches; however in wildcard searches
a symbol is substituted within a word for a letter (or letters)
rather than at the end of a word. Wildcard searches help researchers
find words that share some letters in common, but not all letters
(e.g. man and men). They also help when a word's correct spelling
is unknown (e.g. Carlson and Carlsen). |
HOW WILDCARD SEARCHES WORK
Wildcard
searches broaden searches to retrieve items containing various possible
spellings of words. This type of search increases the number of returns
and locates items that might be missed due to how a word is spelled.
Wildcard searches let search mechanisms look for patterns with various
letters in the place where the wildcard symbol appears. This process
is especially useful when different forms of words are created by
internal changes (e.g. man/men, woman/women, ran/run, and so on) and
when words have more than one possible spelling (e.g. Johnson/Johnsen,
advertise/advertize, etc.).
Wildcard searches can be, and often are, combined with other types
of search refinements (boolean operators, nested terms, etc.) to enhance
precision.
 TOP
HOW
TO CREATE WILDCARD SEARCHES
After reading the online search tips, you will know which symbol to
use to create a wildcard search. Frequently, the wildcard symbol is
a question mark; however, it is best to check the help files. The
symbol is used within the word in place of the letter (or letters)
in question and either used by itself or combined with other terms
in the search.
For example, the search "wom?n and workplace" will return records containing
the words workplace, women, and woman. Without the use of
the wildcard symbol, some records would probably be missed. For example if the
search "women and workplace" was used, records that contained the word "woman",
but not the word "women" would not be retrieved by the search. |
Using
Truncation