This page is intended to help you construct a better search so that you obtain the results you want!
It is best to not enter a sentence or lengthy string of words into the Summon search box. It is more effective to enter short phrases or single words and connect your terms with a Boolean operator. Please review the boxes below for more information on how to use phrase searching, Boolean operators and wildcard searches.
The tips below are specific to searching Summon. Most databases, however, offer similar functionality. Check the "Help" screen of a database to learn more about how each particular database functions.
Summon 2.0™ allows you to search for phrases using “ ” (quotes). Phrase searching allows you to search for documents containing a specific phrase rather than keywords in a randomized order.
The query “academic honesty” will find results with that phrase.
Searches can be performed using the wildcards “?” (question mark) and “*” (asterisk).
The question mark (?) will match any one character and can be used to find “Smith” or “Smyth” by searching for “Sm?th”.
The asterisk (*) will match zero or more characters within a word or at the end of a word. A search for “Ch*ter” would match “Charter”, “Character”, and “Chapter”. When used at the end of a word, such as “Tech*”, it will match all suffixes “technology”, “technological”, and “technically”.
Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search.
To use the proximity search, enclose your search terms in quotes and use the tilde (~) followed by a number. The number indicates the maximum number of words you wish to allow between your search terms.
For example:
"employee engagement"~5
finds material where "employee" and "engagement" appear within 5 words of each other.
NOTE: proximity searching does not take the order of search terms into account. A search on "employee engagement strategies"~5 will yield results in which the three search terms appear in various orders.
Summon offers the following Boolean operations: OR, NOT and AND. The operators must be written in ALL CAPS.
By default, all terms in a search are combined with the AND operator. To expand the results set, use the OR operator “microcircuits OR nanocircuits” will return items that contain either term.
This can be combined with quoted terms such as “teacher education” OR “educator training”.
To exclude items in Summon, use the NOT operator or “-” (hyphen) character before a term. When used in the following query “animal NOT dog” the results will not include the term “dog”.
The single search box in Summon (basic search box or keyword search box in advanced search) will search across many fields automatically. For example, entering an ISBN, ISSN, or Call Number will bring back records related to those fields.
You can explicitly search a field using the syntax: “field:(search terms).” For example, the search ISSN:(1234-5678), finds records that contain that value in the ISSN field. Similarly, the search: title: (microelectronics systems) will deliver records that contain the words Microelectronic Systems in the title.
Searchable fields:
Use of RIT resources is reserved for current RIT students, faculty
and staff for academic and teaching purposes only.
Please contact your librarian with any questions.
