TRUNCATION AND WILDCARD - WEEK 6

Assalamualaikum. Today I would like to tell about what I have learnt in week 6. I am very confusing at first when the lecturer was explaining about this topic. The first topic is about truncation search strategies that we can retrieve more than one spelling or root word. Truncation can give us multiple spelling from one root word. For example when we give one word, it can give us another word that has same meaning. Besides, it also expands the search from one word. For example, we give word *teen, it will return with teens, teenage or teenagers.

The second topic is about wildcard, it is a special character such as an asterisk (*), question mark (?), or pound sign (#), that replaces one or more letters in a word.  It usually presents a single character. Wildcard used in the middle of a word to match usually known variants of a term. For example, we can put question mark at the middle of word: WOM? N , and it will give us several of words such as women, or woman.

Finally in this week, I have learnt about phrase searching. It when you use a string of words (instead of a single word) to search with. For example, when we give two words that have 1 meaning, it will give a meaning for each word. For the database to understand your search, you should put your phrase between brackets ( ) or inverted commas ".

Type your search as follows:

      “Information literacy" or (information literacy)