Tips on How to Perform Searches

Types of Queries The Marshall Islands Collection Search page allows you to find documents via a field query, full-text query, or some combination thereof. A fielded query searches the collection's metadata for matches whereas a full-text query searches the documents' content. To find the documents you're interested in, you can fill in as few as one field on the search page or as many as four. Keep in mind that, in general, the more search criteria you specify, the more relevant your search results will be. Using Operators You can use operators and modifiers to apply logic to your query and pinpoint the exact information you are interested in. The operator defines the relationship among the search criteria you've specified and thus affects the results that are returned. You can change your search results by changing the operators The Concept Operators,"AND," "NOT," "OR," and "ACCRUE," are used to connect fielded as well as full-text search terms. AND Using AND (the default) as the operator returns documents that contain all search terms specified. NOT Returns documents that do not contain the term that follows the NOT operator. OR Returns documents that match at least one of the criteria specified. ACCRUE Essentially the same as using OR, except that the returned results will be ranked according to relevancy.  That is, documents with a higher score contain more of the search criteria than do documents with a lower score. Fielded Query versus Full-Text Query To connect fielded terms, select one of the four operators (AND, OR, NOT, or ACCRUE) from the drop down list.    (Remember that the operator applies to the term entered in the field that follows the selected operator.)  To connect terms entered in the full-text (document content) field, type in the operator between each word or phrase entered. Because these operators are interpreted as query language, you need not surround the operator with angle brackets. Operators Specific to Full Text Searching You may find documents by searching the content of each of the documents in the collection (known as a "full-text" search). You can expand a full-text search by using Evidence Operators or specify the relative location of search terms by using Proximity Operators. Evidence Operators Evidence operators must be enclosed in angle brackets and placed before the search term. <Stem> By default a full-text search returns documents that contain one or more variations of the search term specified <Word> Returns documents that contain the exact search term specified. Enclosing the search term in double quotation marks is equivalent to using the <Word> operator. Use double quotes when you want to search for a phrase containing a word normally used as an operator; for example, bread "and" butter will return only those documents containing the phrase "bread and butter." <Thesaurus> Returns documents that contain the search term specified as well as documents that contain one or more synonyms of the that term <Wildcard> Returns documents that contain matches to a search string containing one or more variables such as * (any character) or ? (a single character) <Soundex> Returns documents that contain one or more words that sound like, or whose letter pattern is similar to, the word specified Proximity Operators Proximity operators are used to specify the relative location of words in a document. To perform such a search, you need to use angle brackets around your operator and place it between two search terms. <Near> Returns a list of documents where the word following the <Near> operator is in close proximity to the word preceding the operator. The results items are ranked according to the relative number of words between search terms; the closer the search terms, the higher the score. To find documents where the specified search terms occur within a specific number of words of eachother, use <Near/n>, where n is an integer representing the maximum number of words appearing between the two search terms. <Sentence> Returns a list of all documents where the words specified are contained in the same sentence <Paragraph> Returns a list of all documents where the words specified are contained in the same paragraph Interpreting Results After you've filled in the fields as desired, click the Search button. A new screen will appear, listing your results.    The number of documents matching your criteria is shown at the top of the page, followed by the actual list of matching documents. Each document listed provides the document name, author, title, and number of pages, and is assigned a score, which is based on the number of matches the document contains and the density of those matches. 82 of 1281 documents matched query (82 shown) Search results.... 0.96 DATA/ihp1/1202_.pdf Author: NONE Title: DOSE REASSESSMENT FOR POPULATION ON RONGELAP AND UTIRIK FOLLOWING EXPOSURE TO FALLOUT FROM THE BRAVO INCIDENT (MARCH 1, 1954) Pages: 0073 Opening/Saving a File To view a document, you must have either Adobe Acrobat Exchange or Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your desktop. To open a file listed in the results, click on its link (underlined and in blue). The web browser will launch an Acrobat reader (if installed on your local computer), which allows you to look at, navigate through, and print the document. If you wish to edit or annotate the document, you must save it to your hard drive or another destination.    Because the file is in pdf format, you must have Acrobat Exchange installed on your computer in order to annotate the document or do hit-to-hit searching (sequentially find highlighted occurrences of terms entered in the full-text field. Note: In the near future, you will be able to do hit-to-hit searching from within your browser.