User's Guide & Site Help

5. Search

The site features many ways to search its content, from the Quick Search box to the Search Forms. The Quick Search box is at the top right of every page of the site. You can access the Search Forms via the Search option in the site's navigation bar.

5.1. General Rules

The following rules apply all of the searches on the site. Some of them, however, are relevant only to non-numeric search fields.

5.1.1. Exact matches

Use quotation marks to tell Search that you are looking for a specific phrase. For example:

blue note

will return all results in which both the term "blue" and the term "note" appear, while

"blue note"

will return only results that have the exact phrase "blue note."

5.1.2. Boolean operators

Search supports the boolean operators AND, OR and NOT.

• AND

  Unless you tell it otherwise, Search assumes that you only want results in which ALL of your search terms appear. This means that there is an implicit "AND" between all your search terms. So entering:

  coltrane love supreme

  will return the same results as if you had entered:

  coltrane AND love AND supreme

• OR

  You can use the OR operator to tell Search to return results in which either search term exists. For instance, if you enter:

  alabama OR montgomery

  your results will include any article in which either "alabama" or "montgomery" exist.

• NOT

  The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. For example,

  trumpet not "miles davis"

  will return all results for "trumpet" which do not include the phrase "miles davis."

• Nesting commands

  Boolean commands can be nested. Use parentheses to tell Search which expressions to evaluate first. For example:

  ("cassius clay" OR "muhammad ali") AND "malcolm x"

5.1.3. Wildcards

You can use the * and ? wildcards in most non-numeric search fields. The question mark or ? character represents any single character.

he?d

will return results for "head" and "heed."

The asterisk or * character represents any number of character. Entering

he*d

will return results for "head" and "heed," as well as "helped," "heard," "headquartered," etc.

5.1.4. Special characters

A search for

resume

will return results that match both the verb "resume" and the noun "résumé" while a search for

résumé

will only return results for the noun "résumé."

5.1.5. Case sensitivity and punctuation

Search terms entered in all one case (either all lower or all upper) will return results in both upper and lower cases. A search for

miles

will return results that match both the word "miles" and the name "Miles." If you capitalize the first letter of the search term, however, Search will look for the format you entered:

Miles

will only return results for "Miles," not "miles."

Search only searches on characters; it does not search for punctuation. To search using initials, put a space between each initial:

w e b du bois

will return results for "W.E.B. Du Bois."

5.1.6. Different word forms

Search will sometimes expand your search term to look for alternate forms of the word. For example, a search for

protest

will return results for "protest," "protests," "protesting," etc. If you want a specific word form (i.e. "protest" but not "protests"), use quotation marks.

5.1.7. "Stop" words

By default, Search ignores certain common words in English. A search for

the temptations

will look for any use of the word "temptations." To look for words that might be ignored by Search, use a quoted search:

"the temptations"

The stop words we use on the site are: a, an, and, are, as, at, be, but, by, for, if, in, into, is, it, no, not, of, on, or, such, that, the, their, then, there, these, they, this, to, was, will, with.

5.1.8. Proximity

Use the NEAR operator to specify search terms that you want to appear close to each other.

henry NEAR gates

will return all results in which the terms "henry" and "gates" appear within ten (10) words of each other.