Template:Find sources/sandbox
Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · Gemini AI · WP refs) · FENS · Bing (Copilot AI) · JSTOR · NYT · WP Library
 | This is the template sandbox page for Template:Find sources (diff). See also the companion subpage for test cases. |
Template documentation | This template is used on approximately 594,000 pages, or roughly 1% of all pages. To avoid major disruption and server load, any changes should be tested in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. The tested changes can be added to this page in a single edit. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them. |
 | This template uses Lua: |
This template produces a series of links to various search interfaces to help find additional reference material for articles. This template should not be used in articles themselves - see Wikipedia:EL#Links normally to be avoided.
Usage
{{Find sources}}{{Find sources|Albert Einstein}}
Parameters
The first parameter is the main search term, which will be treated as a literal string if multi-part (e.g. Albert Einstein will be searched as the single string "Albert Einstein" not "Albert" and "Einstein" separately).
Optional subsequent parameters (up to 4) are additional search terms. They can be enclosed in double quotation marks, preceded by an unspaced - (hyphen) to exclude them from the search results, or both (e.g. -"Marilyn Monroe" to exclude matches containing the phrase "Marilyn Monroe", but not either name by itself, from the search results). You do not need to add -wikipedia, as the template automatically does this for you. Also, there is no need to add words in plural form unless irregular, as the search interface will match (for example) billiards as well given a search term of billiard.
If no parameters are given, the name of the current subpage is used as the search string. If the current subpage has a disambiguator in parentheses, e.g. Happy Birthday (Stevie Wonder song), then the main part of the page name will be quoted and the disambiguation text will follow, like "Happy Birthday" Stevie Wonder song. You can specify that another title be used by using the title parameter.
How this works
Template:Find sources dynamically selects a list of relevant search links based on the WikiProjects listed on an article's talk page. The default search link array is {{find general sources}}. A full list of domain-specific link groups are available in the see also section of this document.
Domain links override
Template:Find sources respects the domain (aka search-domain) parameter (e.g. domain=general), which can be set by editors in {{talk header}} or {{find sources}} to override the automated selection.
Search engines
The template includes links to the following search engines:
- Google, the flagship search engine from Google Inc.
- Google Books, Google's search engine for books.
- Google News, Google's search engine for news sites.
- Google Scholar, Google's search engine for academic papers and other scholarly research.
- Google Images, Google's search engine for images. Only images compatible with Wikipedia's licensing are included.
- Wikipedia Reference Search, a Google search that only searches sites vetted by Wikipedians.
- free news sources
- JSTOR, an online library containing digitised versions of academic journals. Requires a subscription.
- The website of The New York Times, a newspaper of record for the United States.
- Search results from dozens of services provided via EBSCOhost to Wikipedians via Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library.
Examples
- Default search:
{{Find sources}}
- produces:
- Simple search:
{{Find sources|Albert Einstein}}
- produces:
- Complex search:
{{Find sources|Albert Einstein|physics OR cosmology|-"Marilyn Monroe"|relativity|science}}
- produces:
(Note that Google and many other search engines use capitalized boolean operators "OR" and "AND".)
- Custom title search:
{{Find sources|title=Happy Birthday (Stevie Wonder song)}}
- produces:
See also
Topic templates
Domain-specific implementations of {{Find sources}}:
| Topic | Template | Module | Display Box |
|---|---|---|---|
| General sources | {{Find general sources}} | config | {{General sources notice}} |
| └ General sources (mainspace) | {{Find sources mainspace}} | config | |
| Biographical | {{Find biographical sources}} | {{biographical sources notice}} | |
| France | {{Find France sources}} | {{France sources notice}} | |
| Medical | {{Find medical sources}} | config | {{medical sources notice}} |
| └ Medical (mainspace) | config | ||
| Video games | {{Find video game sources}} | config |
Additional resources
- {{Find general sources}}
- {{Refideas}} - template to include links to possible sources
- {{Search}} - the original search template on which this template was based
- {{Search for}} - a multi-purpose search engine sidebar
- {{Reliable sources for medical articles}}
- Help:Find sources
- Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup/Verifiability and sources
- Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Search links