Consult the Master Chart of Vendor Search Codes to determine the proximity operators for your database vendor and how they are defined. While most systems are case insensitive, a few systems, such as Britannica Online , require you to type proximity operators in upper case. Truncation or Wildcards A symbol at the end of a word stem provides for all variants on the word stem. Internal Truncation A symbol within a word provides for all possible variants inside a word or word stem. Look at the Master Chart of Vendor Search Codes or the help pages for the database you are using to determine the truncation symbols.
Most systems provide truncation but some provide only simple plurals.
A field is a section of an electronic record . In electronic catalogs or indexes, each citation to a book or magazine article is called a record. Examples of fields for a book are the title, author, publisher, or date. For magazine or journal article citations, examples of fields are the article title, article author, journal title, or date. Another important field for both types of records is the subject heading or descriptor that the catalogers or indexers have assigned to the record.