www.osterhout.lib.pa.us
District Center Wilkes-Barre Library District
71 South Franklin Street, Wilkes-Barre, PA 18701
Phone: (570) 823-0156
Reference direct dial (570) 821-1959
E-Mail: mail@osterhout.lib.pa.us
Free access from any location with your Luzerne County Library card
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Cross-searchable database of over 100 Oxford ready-reference titles
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Resources include English language and bilingual dictionaries, quotations, and subject references in art, history, literature, philosophy, mythology, politics, medicine, science, business and more!
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Extensive web of cross-references and links
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Wide range of easy-to-use search and browse options
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Information organized on two levels: by subject (mythology etc.) and by book (Dictionary of Asian
Mythology etc.)
QUICK SEARCH
Available from the main screen, Quick Search is the easiest option to use. You just type one or more words, or exact phrases in double quotes, into the input box and click GO or press RETURN on the keyboard. It searches all data base entry headings and gives basic definitions. For example:
* pizza- displays 14 definitions
Click on one of the definitions to get:
*more information
*how to cite the entry
*cross-reference -highlight word or words in an entry for further explanation
*adjacent entries
WIDEN YOUR SEARCH
Use to expand your Quick Search to the next level. Just click on this button in the right-hand corner of the results page. It will search your term within the full text of Oxford. For example:
*pizza- displays 68 results
ADVANCED SEARCH
This searches within a subject by clicking from the list of 24 given subjects. For example:
*pizza
Click on the following subjectfood and drink- displays 18 results found only in this subject
SUBJECTS AND BOOKS
This lists all the books within each of the 24 subjects. It will allow you to search your term within a subject or within only a particular book.
BROWSE
This is an alphabetical list of the entry headings within Oxford Reference. You can also browse the entry headings just within a particular subject.
Cmj 03/06

Cmj 03/06
LINKS
This provides relevant links to external websites for each of the 24 subjects. For example:
*Food & Drink links to websites for recipes, nutrition, healthy living, food allergy, science of cooking and more.
WILDCARDS
There are four wildcard characters which can be used in any Oxford Reference Online search.
The asterisk (*) matches any number of characters or combination of characters. It also stands for nothing, i.e. there doesn't have to be anything in its place - photo* will find photo as well as photogenic , photosynthesis , etc.
Some searches using the * wildcard may yield a very high number of results, for example car* . If this happens you may want to try restricting your search to a particular subject or book, or using an
Advanced Search instead.
The question mark (?) stands for any single character - but only one of them. So a search for act???
might find active , Act411 , action and acting pilot officer , but not act or actuarial .
The hash symbol (#) stands for exactly ONE number only. So a search for "Section ###" would find Section 212 , but not Section 2491 , nor Section ABC .
The @ symbol stands for any single alpha character (letter), so a search for F@ might find FO
(Foreign Office) and FA (Football Association), but not F1 (Formula One). As above, remember that each @ symbol equals exactly one character.
You can mix and match wildcards and plain text if you wish: a search for @@# for instance, would find the British intelligence agencies MI5 , MI6 and MI8 , as well as World War II ( WW2 ) and the digital music compression system MP3 .
PATTERN SEARCH
On the Advanced Search pages, you can use a Pattern Search to find terms which are spelled similarly. The Pattern Search is basically a pattern-matching search. This is very useful in cases where you are not sure of the spelling of the search term, where words have multiple spellings, (for example, where words have variant forms like colour and color ; edema and oedema ), or where words are transcribed phonetically from foreign alphabets (for example, Appolonius and Apollonius , Achilleus ,
Achilles).
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