Each term may be preceded by the standard Boolean operators not, and, or or. If you search for Rondout not Kingston, you'll find all documents containing the word Rondout except those documents which also contain the word Kingston. If you type in and Rondout and Kingston and Strand, you'll find only those documents which contain all three search terms. The default value is or. Thus, a search for Rondout Kingston Strand would return pages with at least one of the three terms.

Shorthand notation also works. A search on Rondout -Kingston is equivalent to the first example, and +Rondout +Kingston +Strand will return the same documents as the second.

If a search term has at least one capital letter, like otIS, the search will be case sensitive with respect to that word - that is, only documents containing otIS will be found. On the other hand, lowercase words like otis will generate hits from Otis, OTIS, or otIS.

To group a collection of words, use quotes. For example, the query "Samuel Cornell" (quotes included) would not generate a hit from Samuel Coykendall met with Thomas Cornell. Without quotes, the sentence would count. Boolean operators can also act on quotations: a search on +the +steamship not "the steamship" would return only those documents where the and steamship appear separately.

Our search finds words, not strings. A search for ham would turn up only that word, not Durham, hamlet, or Windham. To perform a string search, preface your term with the dollar sign - a query on $ham would find all words lists above. Note that more complex wildcard searches using the asterisk are not permitted. Including the asterisk in your query will return a list of all files, but that's its only function.

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