swisscovery - tips and tricks for your research

We recommend that you ...

... use the advanced search – it is more exact and enables you to narrow your search (field limiters, format, language, publication year)

... work with the filters in the right column to minimize search results (restrictions in terms of format, library, publication year etc.)

... adjust the sorting function (e. g. switching from ‘relevance’ to publication date or author name sorting) to list results in a more meaningful order.

good to know:

Iluplus does not distinguish uppercase and non-capital letters

ä, ö, ü are equivalent to a, o, u

diacritical marks can be omitted

ISBN: ISBN number searches can be run with or without hyphens

wildcards and truncation symbols:

? (question mark) replaces exactly one sign
* (asterisk) stands for an indeterminate number of signs

example:
globali?ation
power*

including phrases in a search:

‘’ ‘’ (double quotation marks): enclosing a number of words in double quotation marks instructs iluplus to look for these words in the exact same order

example:
‘’online course’’
‘’social media skills’’
„integrated pest control“

Booleans:

Using Boolean Operators UND (AND) and NICHT (NOT) will help you confine your search, while ODER (OR) expands it. When using simple search, you have to write in these operators, while in the advanced search you can choose them from the dropdown menu.

examples:
online courses UND/AND academic performance
online courses NICHT/NOT moocs; pest control NICHT/NOT ddt
online courses ODER/OR web-based instruction ODER/OR distance education

using brackets:

When running complex, multi-aspect searches, separate the different aspects in the simple search by using a bracket

example:
(online courses ODER/OR web-based instruction ODER/OR distance education) UND/ODER academic performance