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How to Use Summon

Phrase Searching

Summon allows for phrase searching with the use of quotation marks (“ ”). The search “teacher education” will find results with that exact phrase.

Boolean Operators

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, use the NOT operator or the minus sign (-) before a term. The search animal NOT dog does not include results with the term dog.

Proximity Operators

Use the tilde (~) character and a number at the end of multiple words to limit results containing query words within close proximity.  When used on the phrase “chloroplast import” ~5, the term chloroplast and the term import will have to be found within 5 words of each other in the document.

Increasing the Weight of a Term

Use the ^ character to increase the weight of a specific term. The ^ character should be followed by a weight. When used on the phrase "computer Olson^4" the term "Olson" will have more weight and result relevancy will favor that term.

Wildcard Use

Searches can be performed using the wildcards ? and *.

The question mark (?) will match any one character and can be used to find Olsen or Olson by searching for Ols?n.

The asterisk (*) will match zero or more characters within a word or at the end of a word. A search for labo*r will match, for example, labor, labour, laborer, labourer, etc. When used at the end of a word, manage* finds manager, managers, management, etc.

Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search.

Important to know: Any terms retrieved using either * or ? characters are not considered when sorting your results based on relevance (the default). There is no way for Summon to assess the relevance of these terms to your search. For example, your search for 'bio*' could return occurrences of any or all of these terms: 'bionic' or 'biosynthesis' or 'biodegrade' or 'biographic.' One, some, all, or none could be relevant to your research.