Encompass Search Trexler Library

Use WILDCARDS or TRUNCATION (i.e., shortening a word to its root or base form using a designated symbol) for words that might have more than one significant form, OR for terms that might have alternative spellings.​​

First, type as much of the word that you KNOW is correct.

• The catalog software will try to help you out by providing 'typeahead' options.

NOTE: A minimum of three characters must precede any of the following symbols.

​Use an asterisk (*) to indicate any number of letters.

• Add to the end of a word to retrieve multiple variant endings.
• This kind of search returns records with zero or more characters in place of the truncation symbol.
• Example: connect* retrieves connect, connection, connectivity, etc.

Use a pound sign (aka hashtag, octothorpe; #) to represent a single character.

• Replaces one character in a search.
• Example: wom#n retrieves woman and women

Use a question mark (?) to match missing (zero) or up to nine characters.

• Replaces 0 to 9 unknown characters in a search term.
• If ? is followed by a number, it replaces the specified number of unknown characters (?n where n= a number from 1 to 9).
• Examples: 

  encyclop?dia retrieves encyclopedia and encyclopaedia

  res?4tion retrieves respiration, restoration, reservation, etc.