You can search for both descriptive information and metadata, such as title words, author/creator names and subject keywords, as well as 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 advanced search provides a simple form that lets you exercise more control over your search results. For even finer control, you can use the standard search with the following features:
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
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"
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
To match any one of a number of alternative terms, put a | between
them. For example, to
find ontario and either york or toronto:
canada york | toronto
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