Truncation
To include all the possible variants of a word, one can use truncation. When a word is truncated, it is shortened and a symbol replaces some of its letters. There are several instances when you may wish to use truncation to broaden your search results:
- To find plurals
- To account for spelling variations (theater vs. theatre)
- To find related concepts with the same root (library, libraries, librarian, librarians, librarianship, etc.)
To truncate words when searching for items in the DLG, use an asterisk. The DLG search engine only allows truncation at the end of a word. For example:
| This search term ... | ... will retrieve these terms ... | ... in these records |
| integrat* | integrate, integrating, integration, integrationists, etc. | [View results of sample search] |
| segregat* | segregate, segregating, segregation, segregationists, etc. | [View results of sample search] |