Search Help

Use the following boolean operators to help refine your search:

+

A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in every match returned.

-

A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in every match returned.

> <

These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to each match. The > operator increases the contribution and the < operator decreases it. See the example following this list. You must switch the 'Sort By' option to 'Database Relevance' in order to use these operators.

~

A leading tilde acts as a negation operator, causing the word's contribution to the match's relevance to be negative. This is useful for marking “noise” words. A match containing such a word is rated lower than others, but is not excluded altogether, as it would be with the - operator. You must switch the 'Sort By' option to 'Database Relevance' in order to use this operator.

( )

Parentheses group words into subexpressions. Parenthesized groups can be nested.

*

The asterisk serves as the truncation (or wildcard) operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the word preceding the * operator.

"

A phrase that is enclosed within double quote (" ") characters matches articles that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed.

Please Note:

• Hyphens (-) and spaces are both treated as word delimiters by the database. Therefore, it is best to enclose all bird names thta contain spaces or hyphens within quotes (e.g. "red-headed woodpecker"). If you would like to double check a bird's name, please see the year list.
• All matches are sorted by date by default, from least to greatest, unless 'Database Relevance' is checked under the 'Sort By' option. Database Relevance refers to the relevance score assigned by the database during the search. The score is based upon the number of search keywords that are found in the match and any operators (<, >, or ~) that would affect a word's weight.

Examples of boolean searches:

'apple banana'

Find matches that contain at least one of the two words.

'+apple +juice'

Find matches that contain both words.

'+apple macintosh'

Find matches that contain the word “apple”, but rank matches higher if they also contain “macintosh”.

'+apple -macintosh'

Find matches that contain the word “apple” but not “macintosh”.

'+apple ~macintosh'

Find matches that contain the word “apple”, but if the match also contains the word “macintosh”, rate it lower than if match does not. This is “softer” than a search for '+apple -macintosh', for which the presence of “macintosh” causes the match not to be returned at all.

'+apple +(>turnover <strudel)'

Find matches that contain the words “apple” and “turnover”, or “apple” and “strudel” (in any order), but rank “apple turnover” higher than “apple strudel”.

'apple*'

Find matches that contain words such as “apple”, “apples”, “applesauce”, or “applet”.

'"some words"'

Find matches that contain the exact phrase “some words” (for example, matches that contain “some words of wisdom” but not “some noise words”).

If you wish to limit the date range of matches for your search, use the appropriate "To" and "From" fields. Accepted formats for entering the dates are mm-dd-yyyy, mm/dd/yyyy, yyyy-mm-dd, yyyy/mm/dd. Four digits are required for the year and at least one digit is required for both the month and day.

Examples of limited date ranges:

From: 2005-03-12 To: 2007-08-10

Return only matches from March 12, 2005 to August 10, 2007 . Make sure that the date entered in the "To" field is greater than the date entered in the "From" field.

From: 2005-03-12 To: (blank)

Return only matches from March 12, 2005 until the latest date in the database.

From: (blank) To: 2007-08-10

Return only matches from the earliest date in the database to August 10, 2007.