Table of Contents

• How to Search
  
• Constructing Search Queries
  • Case Sensitivity
    
  • Reserved Keywords
    
  • Stopwords
    
  • Wildcard Characters
    
  • Proximity Searching
    
  • Boolean Searching

How to Search

The Dynaweb Button Bar provides the following search controls:

• Search Field: Use to enter any type of search (See below for information on constructing queries)
• Search Button: Sends the query in the Search Field to Dynaweb (The return key on your keyboard also submits the query)
•  Search Forms Button: Accesses search forms for a specific electronic collection
•  Clear Search Button: Clears the current search from the search field and removes all hits in the Table of Contents and Content windows
•  Next Hit Button: Jumps to the next hit
•  Previous Hit Button: Jumps to the previous hit

On completing a search, Dynaweb reports the number of hits it has found within each group and item:

You may then navigate through the groups and items to find the individual hits:

• The Previous Hit button and Next Hit button will move you between hits
• If you are within an electronic book and want to return to the list of electronic books with hits, use your browser's "go" menu. For example, if you are searching the finding aids, use the go menu and return to "Finding Aids." HINT: Don't use the back button or book icon. The back button won't always return you with a single click, and the book icon will clear your search results.

Constructing Search Queries

Case Sensitivity

Searches are not Case Sensitive

Searching for:	Will Retrieve:
library	library Library LIBRARY

Some common words have a special meaning to Dynaweb because they are used in the Dynaweb search language. Be careful when including any of the following reserved keywords in your search:

after	not	directly	within
and	null	in	word
before	inside	of	words
or	containing	with

Enclose any of these words or the entire phrase which contains them in double quotes if you want to search for the keywords themselves

"speeches and writings"	or	speeches "and" writings
"table of contents"	or	table "of" contents

Some common words such as "the" and "a" are considered stopwords and are normally not able to be searched by Dynaweb. See the Dynaweb Stopwords list for a full listing of the default stopwords.

You may include these words in your search, however they will be replaced with a "*", which will match any single word.

This search:	Is equivalent to:	And retrieves:
the document	* document	confidential document internal document
when folders are numbered	* folders * numbered	the folders not numbered if folders were numbered

A question mark (?) will match any single character, while an asterisk (*) will match 0 or more characters. An asterisk used by itself stands for an entire word.

Searching for:	Will Retrieve:
diar*	diary diaries diarist
dep* of state	Dept. of State Department of State
wr?t*	writ write wrote written writings

Use the keywords "after", "before", "of", "within", "word", or "words" to limit your search by word proximity. Note that a proximity search is probably your best search strategy for retrieving a personal name, as this will retrieve a name whether it's in direct order (First Last), inverted order (Last, First) or whether or not it includes a middle name (First Middle Last)

Searching for:	Will Retrieve:
roosevelt within 3 words of franklin	Franklin Roosevelt Franklin D. Roosevelt Roosevelt, Franklin
dept* within 3 words of state	Dept. of State State Department State, Dept. of
seashore within 3 words after cape	Cape Lookout National Seashore

The keywords "and", "or" and "not" allow you to further restrict the scope of your searches.

• "And" looks for occurrences of words or phrases within 20 words of one another.
• "Or" is used to construct lists of multiple keywords or phrases.
• "Not" is useful for screening out unwanted search results.

Searching for:	Will Retrieve:
container list or material list	Container List Material List
nixon within 3 words of richard or pat	Pat Nixon Richard Nixon Nixon, Pat
permission and copyright and (assign* or grant*)	Copyright has been assigned to the Special Collections Library. All requests for permission to publish...

Return to Dynaweb

A project of the Digital Scriptorium
Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University
URL: http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/help/dweb/