Bibliography Search Tips

Search terms: In any field, enter the name, word, or phrase to be searched in the text field, selecting all drop-down options in the same row. Incomplete (partial) names/words also can be used, and searches will return all hits with the full word.

Boolean searches: Complex searches can be formed using "and", "or", and "not" (i.e., "and not"). Order of precedence is top to bottom, in order. As such, "and", "or", and "not" have equal weight when searching. Specifially, this equates to ((term1 boolean term2) boolean term3). E.g., term1 OR term2 would return results with either term1 or term2. A search for term1 OR term2 NOT term3 would first find results with either term1 or term2 and return only the results that also do not include term3.

Foreign characters: The database recognizes only English letters when searching. However, authors and titles containing non-English letters can be obtained by the following means:

Author: Enter the first few letters of an author's name, without accents or other marks; all complete names with this combination will be displayed. E.g., searching the Author field with "Altenm" will display "Altenmüller" and variants "Altenmueller" and "Altenmuller".

For all other fields: Enter the longest part of the search word preceding or following the non-English letter; all entries with this combination will be displayed. E.g., to best search the Title field for "interprète", use "interpr", but for "prévention", use "vention".

For inquiries regarding database details, contact Dr. William Dawson, of PAMA's Research Committee, at w-dawson@northwestern.edu