NZCER Publications Database: Basic Search Help

Finding keywords and key phrases

To find keywords, you need to type an ampersand (&) between each word

      school & transition
      cathy & wylie

To find phrases (several words in order), just type them
(you don’t need speech marks around them)

      bulk funding
      child care

To find synonyms, you need to type a forward slash (/) between each one

      early childhood/preschool/pre-school/kindergarten/day care/daycare

Group synonyms with brackets if you’re adding another search term

      (early childhood/preschool/pre-school) & professional development

To find plurals, alternative spellings, etc, truncate with an asterisk (*)

      child* (finds child, children, child’s etc)
      playcent* (finds playcentre, playcenter, playcentres etc)

To find one term but exclude another term, type an exclamation mark (!) between the terms (a term is a key word or key phrase)

      disadvantage* !disadvantaged (finds disadvantage, disadvantages, but not disadvantaged)

Tip: For best results use more than one keyword or phrase.

Finding titles of books, articles, papers etc

You don’t need to type the whole title. To find the report titled: The socialisation of teachers into the culture of assessment you can...

You can type a phrase (several words in order)

      socialisation of teachers

Or you can type keywords (several words, not necessarily in order)

      socialisation & teachers
      teachers & culture & assessment

Finding authors

Type the author's surname first
Optional: follow their surname with their first name or truncated initials

      wylie
      wylie cathy
      wylie c*

Or use the ampersand (&) between the author’s first and last names

      wylie & cathy

Finding full text only

To restrict your search to full text only

Click the ‘I only want full text’ box  (under the Keywords box)