Searching based on text field criteria depends on the kind of text entered, and the boolean (AND/OR) relationship within and among multiple text box entries. Three kinds of text can be entered:
· single words;
· wild-card word-patterns (containing either an asterisk, a question mark, or square brackets);
· multi-word phrases (surrounded by double-quotes).
The Basics
All text in the text entry boxes is broken into words, where a word is a string of alphabetic and/or numeric characters. Any other characters (spaces, punctuation marks, etc.) are treated identically as word separators. (Asterisks, question marks, square brackets, and double-quote characters are exceptions to this rule, and are described below.) Case is ignored, so you can consider all entries to be read as if they were entered in all upper-case. The following entries are all treated as two separate words: JOHN and SMITH:
John Smith
John-Smith
John,Smith
John Smith
The following text, on the other hand, would be considered a single word (JOHNSMITH):
JohnSmith
Wild-Card Patterns
By including an asterisk, a question mark, or a set of characters within square brackets, you are requesting a wild-card search. The following explains the meaning of the three wild-card patterns:
· Asterisk – an asterisk matches any number (including zero) of adjacent letters. Therefore, the pattern america* would match any of the following words: America, American, Americae, Americano, Americanae, etc.
· Question mark – a question mark matches exactly one charcter. As an example, ameri?a will match America or Amerika (but would not match American).
· Square brackets – a set of characters between square brackets matches exactly one character, but the character must be one in the bracketed set. For example, ameri[ck]a will match either America or Amerika, but nothing else.
· You can include more than one wild-card pattern in a single word. For example, the pattern ameri[ckq]* would match, among others, America, American, Amerique, Amerika.
The only restriction on wild-card characters is that they cannot be used as the first letter in a word. So you cannot, for example, search for [ij]apan. (You could, as an alternative, search for iapan OR japan.)
Wild-card searching will tend to slow the search process. Particularly in the case when only one or a few characters appears in a word prior to the first wild-card character, the search engine will need to sort though considerably more data to perform the search, and, in consequence, the search times may be noticeably longer.
Word Phrases (using double-quotes)
If two or more words are enclosed in double-quotes, then a match occurs only when the source field contains the exact same set of adjacent words (in the same order). A phrase can include wild-card words within it. The phrase "Nor* Amer*" would find a variety of titles including those containing the following:
North America
Nord Amerika
Nord-America
Nordwestkuste Americas
Any words in double-quotes that are in the list of stopwords are completely ignored. Therefore, when searching for "east and west" in the Title field, since and is in the stopwords list, the returned set of matches will include any title that includes east followed immediately by west, or any title where only stopwords come between east and west. The following titles would all be returned by a Title search for the phrase "east and west":
Map of Canada East and West
Grand Southern Tour of England Including Principal Part of East, West, and Inland Counties
A Map of the New Governments of East & West Florida
Using multiple search words or phrases
You can include multiple search words or phrases in a single text entry box. When you do this, an implicit boolean AND operation is applied to the multiple elements, meaning that only records that contain all of the elements will be returned. However you can use the keyword "OR" to change this: Placing the word OR (case doesn’t matter) between words or phrases causes a boolean OR operation to be implied. (You may also explicitly specify a boolean AND operation by using the keyword "AND", but this isn’t necessary, since an AND operation is the assumed relationship between multiple words or phrases in a given text box.
Note: AND takes precedence over OR. Therefore if you are searching for maps of northern Europe and/or Asia, and you enter the following in a text box for the Title field:
Europ* or Asia* and north or septentrion*
this will be interpreted as:
Europ* or (Asia* and north) or septentrion*
which is probably not what you had in mind. Parentheses cannot be used to specify a different binding between terms. However through the use of multiple text boxes (described below), you can get the effect you desire:
(Europ* or Asia*) and (north or septentrion*)
Note: AND and OR are not interpreted as boolean operators within a quoted phrase. Instead, since both these words are in the stopwords list, they will simply be ignored.
The order in which the elements in a text box are listed does not matter: Each element is separately searched for, and the records which contain the elements, meeting the AND/OR relationships specified, in whatever order, will be returned. As an example, if you search the Title field for Ireland Scotland, you are requesting a search for records that contain the word Ireland somewhere in their title, and the word Scotland somewhere in their title. Therefore, the following records will be among those returned:
England Scotland & Ireland
Ireland in Provinces and Counties [on sheet with] County Map of Scotland
You may combine simple words, wild-card words, or double-quoted phrases among the elements of a multiple-element search string. For example, to search for maps whose titles refer to the theater of war in North America, and to ensure that variant spellings are included, you might enter the following search text:
"Nor* Amer*" war theat*
This request means find titles which include the phrase "Nor* Amer*" (two adjacent words, one beginning with Nor and the next beginning with Amer) and the word war, and a word beginning with theat. Among the returned titles would be the following Sayer & Bennett map:
The Theatre of War in North America, with the Roads, and Tables, of the Superficial Contents, Distances, etc. …
If a stopword is included among the words in a multiple-element entry, it will be ignored. Therefore, if you search for England and France in titles, records will be returned that contain the word England and the word France somewhere in the map title, regardless of whether the word and is present. Since no double-quotes were specified, this is not a phrase search, so the two words, England and France, could appear in anywhere in the title, regardless of order or adjacency.
Combining text searches
There are four text boxes into which you can type search texts. The drop-down list to the right of each text box determines in which field (or fields) the entered text is searched for. Above all but the first text box is an AND/OR button choice, which lets you control the boolean logic that is applied to the subsequent search text, relative to any preceding search entries.
If AND is selected, a record is returned only if both the preceding text search and the subsequent text search succeed. If OR is selected, then a record is returned if either the preceding or the subsequent text search succeeds. If you use more than two of the four text search boxes, then it is important to know that AND relationships take precedence over OR relationships. In other words, if you use three text boxes and specify:
this will be interpreted as a request to return any Hondius map, or any Africa map by Jansson. This is because the AND relationship takes precedence and the request is interpreted as:
Hondius OR (Jansson AND Africa)
If your goal is to find African maps by either Hondius or Jansson, you should use the following request:
This will be interpreted, as you intended.
If you leave some blank text boxes between filled-in text boxes, then only the AND/OR buttons which are immediately above the filled-in text boxes are used. Therefore, if the four text boxes and AND/OR buttons are as follows:
then this is interpreted as:
Hondius AND Africa.
See Text Search Examples.
Overview topics: The Search Screen and Text Field Criteria