How to use the Douglas College Search Engine

1. Type your keywords in the search box.
2. Press the Search button to start your search.

Here's an example:

1. Type business management in the search box.
2. Press the Search button or press the Enter key.
3. The Results page will show you references to The Business Management Program.

Tip: Don't worry if you find a large number of results. Even though the number of results may be large, the most relevant content will always appear at the top of the result pages. Please remember that entering several words when searching can produce a shorter and more accurate list.

More Basics - An Overview

Here's a quick overview of the rest of our Basic Help. Just click on the links to jump to these sections.

What is an 'Index'?
What is a word?
Simple Tips for More Exact Searches

What is an Index?

Webster's dictionary describes an "index" as a sequential arrangement of material. Our index is a large, growing, organized collection of Web pages and discussion group pages on the Douglas College Server. The 'index' becomes larger every day as people send us the addresses for new Web pages. We also have technology that crawls the Web sites looking for links to new pages. When you use our search service, you search the entire collection using keywords or phrases.

What is a word?

When searching, think of a word as a combination of letters and numbers. The search service needs to know how to separate words and numbers to find exactly what you want on the Internet. You can separate words using white space and tabs.

Simple Tips for More Exact Searches

All searches are case insensitive and accent insensitive. Searching for "Nursing" will match the lowercase "nursing".

Including or excluding words:

To make sure that a specific word is always included in your search topic, place the plus (+) symbol before the key word in the search box. To make sure that a specific word is always excluded from your search topic, place a minus (-) sign before the keyword in the search box.

Example: To find information on Nursing but without accessing information on Psychiatric Nursing, try nursing -psychiatric.

Expand your search using wildcards (*):

By typing an * at the end of a keyword, you can search for the word with multiple endings.