Simple Search using:
Search for your keyword terms across All materials, or by Title or Author, then click Enter or 
to view results.
Your results will be a mixture of articles, books and other resources.
Refine your results by using the limits on the left-hand side of the page, i.e. Peer-reviewed Journals, Full Text Online and Available in the Library.
Modify your search by applying further limits, e.g. Type, Date, Library, or click x to Clear search terms.
See the Search results page to find out more about working with your results.
Use Advanced Search for more detailed searching.
Use Browse Search to explore alphabetically by subject, author, title or call number.
Use phrase searching to get more specific results
e.g. "gold mining" otago
Use the wildcard or truncation symbol (*) to find alternative word endings
e.g. mine* will find mines, miner, mineralogy, minerals...
From May 2015 your original search term/s will be expanded to include inflections; also known as lemmatisation:
e.g. root form of a word: going will find go, computers will find computer
e.g. noun plurals: human right will find human rights
e.g. verbs: go will find went, gone and goes
Use this wildcard symbol within a word to find single letter variations
e.g. wom?n
Wildcard symbols do not work on the front of a search term.
e.g. *aying or ?aying will not find saying or playing, it will only search for aying
Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT) must be entered in capital letters or the search will include all terms.
Use of AND is not required between keywords so these examples will find the same result
e.g. water (fluoride OR fluoridation) ...same result as: e.g. water AND (fluoride OR fluordation)
e.g. water AND fluoride AND teeth ...same result as: e.g. water fluoride teeth
Use OR to find either a word or phrase in your search results
e.g. student OR learner
e.g. "secondary school" OR "high school"
Use NOT to exclude a word or phrase from your search results
e.g. fish NOT whales
Searches without OR or NOT will find all terms
e.g. "Treaty of Waitangi" partner* rights
Group terms within a search using parentheses:
e.g. shakespeare (drama OR tragedy)
e.g. "food preparation" (safety OR rules)
Use Boolean operators in Advanced Search too.