Search terms may be combined with the following Boolean operators:
By default, all terms in a search are combined with the AND operator.
Example: teacher AND education will return results that contain both terms.
Use OR to expand the results set.
Example:microcircuits OR nanocircuits will return items that contain either term.
Use NOT to exclude items the results list. You may also use the “-” (dash) character in front of the term you wish to exclude.
Example: animal NOT dog will not include the term dog.
When two or more terms or expressions are adjacent with no intervening Boolean operator, an AND is assumed. For example, searching for the keywords Singapore History is similar to searching for the keywords Singapore AND History.
FindMore will process terms within the parentheses first, followed by AND, then OR.
Use quotation marks “ ” to search for a phrase.
Example: The search “teacher education” will find results containing the exact phrase.
Searches can be performed using the following wildcards:
The symbol ? will match any one character.
Example: The search Ols?n can be used to find Olsen or Olson.
The symbol * will match zero or more characters within a word.
Example: Ch*ter will match Charter, Character and Chapter.
When * is used at the end of a word, it will match all suffixes.
Example: Temp* will match Temptation, Temple and Temporary.
Note: Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search. The use of wildcards within a phrase search is not supported.
FindMore will automatically search for word variants. Searching for "watches" (with or without quotes) will find results with "watch". Currently, there is no way to turn it off.
Use the tilde character ~ to find words within a defined proximity to other words.
Example: "Singapore history"~3 will find results where the two terms are within at most three words of each other. Quotes are necessary.
Use the caret symbol ^ to direct FindMore@NUSL that a certain term is more important others.
Example: The search statement China^10 "Singapore History" will increase the term weight of the keyword China and this results in higher rankings for more China-related results.
Do NOT enter author, edition or publisher. Do NOT copy and paste the whole reference or citation.
e.g Almeida, H., Campello, M., & Weisbach, M. S. (2005). The cash flow sensitivity of cash. The Journal of Finance, 59(4), 1777-1804
Search "The cash flow sensitivity of cash"
Use Advanced Search if you want to use the author together with the title to help narrow the search.
Use Content Type facet to reduce the results if there are too many results.
Still can't find it or too many results? Use Advanced Search.
If it is a book, use the ISBN if available.
Alternatively, search for both Title and Author. To be even more specific, you can even add Publication Date.
If you are looking for journal articles, please note that we cover only online journal article titles and we do not have permission to add all journal article titles into the search. Therefore you may not find some journal articles, even if we have access. Follow this method of searching using LINC to confirm if we really have the article.
Add quotes to ensure important phrases are found together.
The system generally ranks results with words that are closer together higher, but occasionally might rank other results that have search terms far apart due to other ranking factors. Use quotes to force the results to have the exact phrase.
You can use proximity operators to specify that the words have to be N words apart. "Singapore policy"~3 will find results where the two terms are within at most three words of each other.
Use Advanced Search for precise controlled searches.
The Advanced Search lets you force results to have particular words in specific fields such as title. This is especially effective for Country specific searches (e.g. Singapore, Malaysia). Otherwise the country might appear somewhere in the full-text and the item may not be on the country at all.
A even more advanced technique is to use the caret symbol to emphasis that certain search terms are more important. E.g. "media policy"^2 Singapore, tells the system to weight "media policy" more highly.
Use Discipline and Subject Terms facets to restrict search to specific discipline/subject. Disciplines are standardized for all items in FindMore and are at broad levels. Subjects are drawn from different sources using different systems of classification, hence, the terms used will not be standardized.
Use Content Type, Publication Date facets to restrict search to specific content type or date.
By default, the search may exclude Book Reviews & Newspaper Articles as these are not scholarly material. But for certain situations, like current events, they may be appropriate, so you may want to show them.
Get more results by logging before searching. You don't have to login before searching, but if you do, you get access millions more results from Web of Science, Scopus, MLA, PILOTS and more.
It is not necessary to login with your NUSNET ID and password before searching to see results in FindMore. You will be prompted to login to access full-text when necessary.
However doing a login before searching has a few benefits
1. You will see more articles, conference proceedings and other items from various restricted sources including
This will enable more articles to be found in FindMore. For example "The bonsai under the banyan tree: democracy and democratisation in Singapore" can only be found in FindMore, after login because it is in Web of Science only and not in the normal FindMore results.
Not all such items will be available in full-text, however those that we have in full-text will be indicated.
2. You will also be able to see Time cited data if available (from Web of Science and Scopus) for articles.
Get even more results by using Add results beyond your library's collection.
This option will show a lot more articles or books that we currently may not have access to (use document delivery to request purchase of article or ask us to purchase the book). Others may be free or open access material which we have not added.
FindMore searches a lot of NUS library subscribed material but even it is still not comprehensive. It is worthwhile trying a subject specific database which may make it easier to find what you need.
Citation trails allow you to explore a topic and collect material by following a chain of articles that cite each other. This feature enhances serendipitous discovery and allows you to easily see the academic context of your sources. Citation trails work in two directions:
This gives you easy access to important articles that will expand and enrich your own work.
Metadata provided by CrossRef is used for matching to build the citation trails. In order to provide a comprehensive list of citations, some of these references may be outside of the library’s collection.
For example, the following record has both types of citations.
Selecting a citation link in the record, opens a page that lists the records that match the type of citation that you have selected: Cites or Cited by. The following example lists the records that this record cites.
As you link to other records' citations, you can see the trail by selecting the View your citation path link. The depth of the path appears next to the link:
From the path, you can return to a previous citation in the trail by selecting its link. To display your original search results, select the Search tab.