Advanced Search Techniques

Boolean Operator Searches

The following Boolean operators can be used to combine terms. Note that the Boolean operator must be capitalized.

Operator Explanation  Search Example Result
AND Limit searches to find items containing all words or phrases combined with this operator education AND resolution Returns search results with the terms education and resolution. 
OR Enlarge searches to find items containing any of the words or phrases surrounding this operator education OR resolution Returns search results that include either the term education or resolution. 
NOT Exclude items containing the word following this operator education NOT resolution Returns search results that only include the term education.

Phrase Searches

Most useful when searching for specific American Legion programs.  

Method

  • Place quotes (") around terms to search for an exact phrase.
  • Phrase search needs to be the beginning of the search when being combined with other search methods.
  • Only use one phrase in a search. 

Search Examples

  • "American Legion Riders"
  • "Boys Nation" 
  • "Operation Comfort Warriors"
  • "Boys Nation" AND scholar*
  • "American Legion Riders" AND 2005

Proximity Searches

Useful when searching for names.

Method

  • Place quotes around terms to search then a tilde (~) with number of characters that should be allowed between the search terms. Note that there are no spaces between the quotes, tilde and character number. Search should be formatted as "term1 term2"~10.

Examples

  • "Brett Reistad"~10 
    • Search returns results with Brett Reistad and Brett P. Reistad.
  • "Ronald Conley"~10
    • Search returns results that include Ronald Conley and Ronald F. Conley.

Truncation or Wildcard Searches

Method

  • Use an asterisk (*) after a word stem to get all results having words starting with that root. For example: select* will return all results with selects, selector, selectman, selecting.

Examples

  • scholar*
    • Search returns results that include the terms with scholar, scholars, scholarship, and scholarships.