OR Record must contain either word or both words. NOT generally decreases the number of books you will find. This operator is not often used in research.
Parenthesis insures that the concept of Michigan is a limiting factor to both frogs AND toads.
Truncation is used when you are unsure of the spelling of a word or when you want to get variations of a word. Stop words are usually prepositions, articles or conjunctions that WebCat ignores when performing a search. Grist for the mill Common stop words a, an, as, at, be, but, by do, for, if, in, is, it, of, on, the, to Limiting Searches Quick Searches and Complex Searches can be refined and narrowed by limiting the results in several categories. Limit by book, ref-book, microform, audiovisual, government document, etc. This sorts your results by selected categories.