Bimbos and Zombies in the Library

I was wandering through the “stacks” today; that’s what we library nerds call the general collection here in the library. I usually browse the “stacks” for eye catching books, furry covers, heat reactive paper, or catchy titles. Untidy gender was my favorite until today when I came across…Bimbos and Zombies. No kidding you can really find bimbos and zombies in the library! I’m not much one for bimbos, but I am quite fond of zombies so I asked myself: “how can I come up with a tidy search to find out how many zombies we have in the library?”

I like to start by doing a general key word search in the library catalog…feel free to try this yourself. When I enter zombie the catalog produces 49 titles, if I try zombies the catalog gives me 32 titles. I can use a Boolean operator 'OR', so I search 'zombie or zombies' and that produces 77 titles. That is just not enough zombies for me, I mean I’m not one for math, but doesn’t 49+32= 81. Tricky you say, well yes it is, but I can show you how to be tricky right back…with the zombifying power of TRUNCATION!

Truncation allows you to search words that begin with similar letters, but end differently. Most catalogs and databases use an asterisk (*). Truncation allows you to identify part of a word and search for that expanding your results and reducing the length of your search statement. So I can do a general key word search for zombi* and ….POOF 81 results. So we have at least 81 zombies in the library, how many bimbos can you find?