Help with Searching

Phases

When searching for specific phrases these should be enclosed within double quotes. For example, "Flinders University".

AND Searches

When searching for pages that must contain two or more given keywords these should contain the 'AND' operator between them. For example, Flinders AND University.

OR Searches

When searching for documents that may contain either one keyword or another these should contain the 'OR' operator between them (or a comma). For example, Flinders OR University and Flinders, University.

Case sensitivity

You can design your search to be either case sensitive or insensitivity. If you pass a mixed case search string, case sensitivity is applied to the search. If you pass all upper or all lower case, case insensitivity is assumed.

For example:

  • A search on 'Flinders' will find 'Flinders' but will not find 'flinders'.
  • A search on 'flinders' will find 'Flinders', 'flinders', 'FLINDERS' and 'FliNdErS'.

Wild Cards

You can enter comma-delimited strings and use wildcard characters (regular expressions). By default, a simple query searches for words. For example, entering the word "all" will find documents containing the word "all" but not "allegorical." You can use wildcards to broaden the scope of the search. "all*" will return documents containing both "all" and "alliterate." Case is ignored, but only when (as above) the search string is all lowercase or all uppercase. If the criteria is mixed case ("All"), only the same case would match (only "All", not "all" or "ALL").

Compound Searches

You can use the AND, OR, and NOT operators in a simple query.

For example:

  • A query that will return all documents that mention "Flinders and either "University" or "Baudin" would look like "Flinders AND (University OR Baudin)".
  • Conversely a query that would return all documents that mention "Flinders" and "Baudin" but not "University" would be "Flinders AND Baudin NOT University".

Other Information

To include an operator in a search, you surround it with double quotation marks: Flinders"and" Baudin. This expression searches for the phrase "Flinders and Baudin."