Help for Advanced Search

Use advanced search to search multiple collections and produce more accurate search results by using additional criteria to a search word or phrase.

You can specify the following criteria in the advanced search screen:
  • Subject: Click one or more collections in the list box to include in your search. A collection represents a list of documents currently available for you to search.

  • Search for: Type a word or phrase in this field to represent the text you want to search for in the collections you previously selected. Follow these rules for specifying your search text:

    • To search for multiple words, separate each word with a space. For example, if you specify time manage, the search engine will return all documents that contain the words time or manage. Additionally, it will return all documents that contain variations of these words, such as timely and management.

    • If you are going to perform a Boolean search, you can search for an exact word or phrase by enclosing the word or phrase in quotation marks. For example, if you specify "time manage" as your Boolean search query, a list of all documents that contain the phrase "time manage" will appear.

  • Search syntax: There are two types of search syntax you can use: literal (free text) and Boolean search. A literal text search finds the documents most similar to your query. A Boolean search allows you to use traditional search operators such as AND, OR, and NOT for exact match searching.

    • Use AND to return all documents that contain the words you specified in the Search for field. For example, entering Monet AND lilies would return all documents that contained the words Monet and lilies.

    • Use OR to return all documents that contain at least one of the words you specified in the Search for field. For example, entering Monet OR lilies would return documents that contained Monet or lilies.
    • Use NOT to return all documents that contain the first word you entered in the Search for field, but not the second word you entered. For example, entering Monet NOT lilies would return documents that only contained Monet but no lilies.

  • Number of files to return: Indicates the maximum number of documents you want the system to return after the search. Documents are rated according to relevance; the more occurrences of the search criteria you specified, the more relevant a document is and the more likely it is to be the one you want. To restrict your search to only those documents with the highest relevance ratings, type the number of documents you want to see in this field.
Example

Search for the phrase time management in collections X, Y, and Z using a Boolean search. Include documents that also contain the word "schedule" and any of its variations. Exclude any documents that pertaining to the subject of "office". Only show 20 returned documents.
  1. Select the X, Y, and Z collections from the Subject list box.
  2. Enter the following in the Search for field:

    "time management" AND schedule NOT office

  3. Click the Boolean radio button.
  4. Enter 20 in the Number of documents returned field.

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