Omni

Searching in Omni is like searching in any academic database. You can search by entering simple keywords, but you can improve your search results by including some of these tips and tricks, which are highlighted below.

Tip: It is important to note that Omni does not flag spelling mistakes, so make sure you type out your keywords correctly, as this will impact your results!

Boolean operators are a way to narrow, broaden, or exclude your searches.

AND - all words will be searched

OR - any of the words will be searched

NOT - excludes words from the search

In Omni, the AND operator is the default operator so Omni will interpret multiple search words with no Boolean operators as a search for all the search words.

In Omni, Boolean operators are case-sensitive and must be entered in ALL CAPS. Search words are not case-sensitive.

Examples:

• climate storms - finds items containing both words, in any order
• climate AND storms - finds items containing both words, in any order
• climate OR storms - finds items containing either word, in any order
• climate NOT storms - finds items containing the first word, but not the second word

Combining Boolean operators within a single search can lead to large search results with irrelevant material because Omni will process such searches from left to right. To avoid this, use brackets () to tell Omni in what order to process the operators.

Example:

Without brackets: climate AND storms OR warming

Finds items that contain both the works climate and storms plus items containing the word warming on its own.

To change the default order of how Omni searches when mixed Boolean operators are involved, place brackets around words using OR operator so anything enclosed with brackets is processed first.

Example:

With brackets: climate AND (storms OR warming)

Finds items that contain the word climate with either the words storms or warming)

Putting words within quotation marks " " makes Omni search for items with the exact words in the order specified.

Examples:

• "global warming"
• "climate change"
• "great lakes"
• "in the heat of the night"

Rather than trying to compile a list of all possible variants of a search term wildcard symbols are very powerful search tools. Omni supports the following wildcard symbols:

• The question mark ? can be used to replace a single character anywhere within a word.
• The asterix * replaces any number of characters and can be used in the middle or at the end of a word.

Examples:

• wom?n finds items containing woman, women, etc.
• le?ter finds lester, letter, etc.
• le*ter finds lester, letter, laugher, lighter, etc.
• pollut* finds pollute, polluter, polluters, polluting, etc.

When using either of the specific search scopes Trent + Other Omni Libraries or Trent Library Omni will automatically include related terms to your search. Search results will include an option to limit by the specific term entered

Examples:

• human resource management also retrieves personnel management
• high blood pressure also retrieves hypertension
• high blood sugar also retrieves hyperglycemia
• global politics also retrieves world politics