Search Tips

The search form is a simple tool that lets you search for descriptive information and metadata, such as titles, author/creator names, subject keywords, or the text content of books and other documents, where available. Search terms are not case or accent-sensitive: "Français" and "francais" will produce the same result.

The following features can be used within the search box to refine the results:

Wildcards: ? and *

Use ? in the middle or at the end of a word to match any one character. Use * to match any number of characters (including zero).

For example, to find either defence or defense: defen?e
To find either labour or labor: labo*r

Phrases: ""

To search for an exact phrase, enclose all of the words in double quotes. You cannot use wildcards within a phrase.

For example, to find documents that contain the phrase quebec city and not just the individual terms quebec and city: "quebec city"

Excluded terms: -

Use - in front of a word or phrase to indicate that the term must not appear in the record.

For example, to find documents that contain paris but not france: paris -france

Alternate terms: |

To match any one of a number of alternative terms, put a | between them.

For example, to find "ontario" and either "york" or "toronto": ontario york | toronto

Field search: ti:, au:, su:

Use ti: in front of a word or phrase to search only document titles. Use au: and su: to do the same for author/creator names and subject headings/keywords.

For example: to find documents that contain vancouver in the title: ti:vancouver

Search Tips for ICR content

CRKN has made some parts of the RG10 collections in Héritage more discoverable by running specific content through Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) software. For instructions on how to use this content, visit this page.