Phrase and Exact Phrase Searches

A phrase search looks for matches to multiple words, in the same order you typed them. You might choose a phrase search when you know the phrase is part of a specific title.

Your library may offer another type of phrase searching called an exact search. An exact search looks for the exact phrase, from beginning to end.

Examples:
For a phrase search, you select Phrase from the Search submenu. You type nancy drew in the Search for box, and select Title in the Search by box. The results include all the titles in the Nancy Drew mystery series, such as Nancy Drew, Girl Detective. No 10, The Disoriented Express. (If you had typed drew nancy you would likely get no results, because word order matters.)

For an exact search, you select Exact from the Search submenu. You type nancy drew in the Search For box, and select Title in the Search By box. You get no results, because the exact phrase search looks for all the words in the title from beginning to end, and no title is named simply Nancy Drew. An exact search is useful when you know the entire phrase precisely. You can also use the beginning part of the phrase and a wildcard character: Nancy Drew*.

In this section:

Search for a phrase or an exact phrase