This is a working reproduction of the search form: each box is numbered and you will find explanations below.
What is indexed?
The search engine indexes all of the Finding Aids, except individual field names and descriptions at table level -- these
have been omitted because they would make the index very large, and searching very slow, without generally improving search results.
The areas of the website outside the main NDAD archive, such as Help pages, are also indexed, but to search them you must change the
drop-down menu [2].
1. What to search for
The Basics
Normally you will just type one or more words into the Search for: box. The search is case-insensitive (CeNsUs
is the same as census), and non-alphanumeric characters (punctuation etc) are generally ignored.
Hyphenated Words
When searching for a hyphenated word such as "vice-president", it's usually better to search for the individual words. Pages
containing "vice-president" will be found if you search for vice-president,
vicepresident,vice president, or just president; the first two of these searches are identical, and will
NOT return pages where "vice president" appears without its hyphen. The third search is likely to give the most results because it
will find the words whether or not they are hyphenated in the page.
Synonyms and Endings
The search program automatically expands your search terms to includesynonyms and endings.
Synonyms are mainly alternative spellings of the same word, so if you search for colour, pages containing the American
variantcolor will also be matched.
Endings are alternative forms of the word, including the plural form for singular nouns (or vice versa), and various alternative
endings for verbs. For example, if you search for drink, the program will also search for drinking, drinker,
drinks and drinkers and will return documents that match any of these. All of these additional derived words are
displayed on the search results page, so you know what was actually searched for.
Pages which contain the exact word that you specified (if any) should be given a higher relevance score than those only
containing derived words. Of the latter, synonyms (because they are basically the same word in a different spelling) are scored more
highly than endings.
You can disable all of this, and only return matches for the exact words you specify, by selecting the Exact Match
Only checkbox.
Can I search for fixed phrases?
Not as such. Searching for a fixed phrase is not normally necessary; if you just search for all the words, you should find that
documents that contain the exact phrase are among the highest scoring results.
Can I search for partial words?
Yes, there is a facility to do prefix matching, by specifying a prefix followed by the * character.
For example, you might search for british rail* which would match documents containing "british" and (rail or rails or railways
or ....)
Most of the time this should not be necessary because the program automatically searches synonyms and alternative endings. However you
may find that using this method produces more relevant results, and you can fine-tune it as you wish.
You must specify at least 3 characters prior to the *.
2. Where to search
By default, only the Finding Aids (catalogues and summaries) are searched. You can change this by selecting another value
from the drop-down list. For instance you can search only the Help Pages, or the Entire Website. The data and documentation within the
archive is not searchable, due to the sheer quantity, but you should be able to find relevant terms in the finding aids instead.
Here you can tell the search engine whether you want to match documents containing all the words you have specified
(the default), orany (one or more) of them. In any mode, a document which matches more than one of
the words will be given a higher relevance score.
Boolean Expressions
For more complex queries you can specify a boolean expression. This consists of search words separated by
and, or, or not. For example, to search for pages which contain the word "food" but
not the word "drink", select Boolean Expression as your Match: method and type food not drink. Note: the
correct syntax for the not operator is A not B, never A AND not B or A OR not
B. not is a binary operator. Think of it as meaning "without", ie "A without B".
The search engine expands all simple (Any/All of these words) queries into boolean expressions which are reported back with your
results. You can use these for fine-tuning a simple query. For instance, if you do a default "All of these words" search for food
ministry, the engine will say something like:
Searched the Finding Aids for (food or foods) and (ministry or ministries)
This demonstrates that you can use (parentheses) to specify precedence in boolean expressions. You
might then change your search method to Boolean to modify this query, eg(food or foods) and ministry not ministries.
When using Boolean Expression mode (particularly for queries like the above) you probably also want to specify Exact Match Only.
4. Sort Order
Normally, results are delivered in order of their relevance, which is calculated according to whether the pages
contain your search words, or derived words, and where in the document those words appear. You can change this setting to instead sort
your results by how recent each page is (the date when the file, or the underlying data, was last modified) or in
alphabetical order of the title of the document. By selecting the checkbox you can reverse any
of these.
5. Matches Per Page
Here you can specify how many results you want to see on each page. The default is 20.
6. Search button
For simple searches, you only need to fill in the upper part of the search form and press the Search button once. Your matches, if
any, will be displayed underneath the form. See your search results.
Your search results
When the search is complete, some or all of the matches are shown below the search box. If there were too many to fit onto one page,
there will be a page selector at the top and bottom of the list.
For each matching document, the title is shown as a link which will take you to that document, and then a brief excerpt from the
document to help you decide whether it's what you were looking for. The excerpt may or may not contain the actual search term. If it's
there, it will be highlighted. If it isn't, it usually means that the term occurs some way down in the document.
After each search, the form still contains your search request. You can add or modify terms in the search field, or over-write them to
start a new search.
Help
