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Primo Search Help: SEARCH TIPS

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators can broaden or narrow your results. 

Use AND to retrieve results that contain both search terms:

police AND federal

Use OR to retrieve results that contain any or all of your search terms:

politics OR government

Using NOT to exclude irrelevant results:

canine NOT dental

Quotation Marks

Quotation marks can be used to retrieve more specific results.

Consider searching for a specific phrase:

"global warming"
"state power"
"social media"

Consider searching for a specific spelling of a word:

"colour" instead of "color"
"artefact" instead of "artifact"
"programme" instead of "program"

Parentheses

Parentheses combine keywords and control the order of boolean operators.

Create more complex and focussed search queries:

(tertiary AND university) AND education

(heart OR lung) AND bypass

(Facebook NOT Twitter) AND social media

Truncation

Truncation and wildcards are used to search for any spelling of a word.

Truncation: use an asterisk (*) to replace part of a word:

librar* = library, libraries, librarian

*plane = airplane, aeroplane, warplane

Wildcards: use a question mark (?) to substitute one letter within a word:

analy?e = analyse, analyze

wom?n = woman, women

Fields

Use the field options in Primo Advanced Search to streamline your results.

Fiction items only:

Select the Subject field and search fiction.

Theses & dissertations:

Limit the Material Type to theses. Theses by Charles Sturt University graduates can be isolated from these results.

Refine by author:

Use the Author field to search for items by a particular author. 

Synonyms

If your keywords aren't yielding suitable results, consider different synonyms.

teenager:

tween, adolescent, youth, juvenile

benefit:

advantage, influence, support, asset

Charles Sturt University acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands on which its campuses are located, paying respect to Elders, both past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations Peoples.

Charles Sturt University is an Australian University, TEQSA Provider Identification: PRV12018. CRICOS Provider: 00005F.