For tips on entering your search argument, see each search engine’s help section for detailed search options. The following are a few general tips to locating the information you need without having to search through thousands of pages to find it.

• Use only lower case letters to enter your search criteria.

• Use quotation marks to search for an exact phrase. For example, to search for articles on Edgar Allen Poe, enter "Edgar Allen Poe" into the text box. If you entered just his full name without the quotation marks, you will find every page with Edgar or Allen or Poe in the title. That will be a much larger group of entries to sift through to the find information you need.

• Be as descriptive as possible. For example, try using “19th century tables” instead of old furniture.

• Including and excluding words. Use a plus (+) sign in front of a word to require that the word appear in the results. Use a minus (-) sign in front of a word to exclude it from the results. For example, you want to search on all trucks except Ford, try “trucks –Ford”.

• Use of the words Either/Or should be in all caps. For example, search for “Colorado skiing OR snowboarding”.