- Boolean and
- A search combining two or more keywords that only brings results that contain both words. Adding another keyword with Boolean and will decrease your results. Web search engines sometimes call this "must contain ...".
- Boolean not
- A search combination used to reduce the number of irrelevant results. Boolean not is used with a secondary keyword to identify and exclude items that mention that word. For example, you might search for "bears NOT teddy" if you want information about animals, not toys. Many search engines do not support Boolean not.
- Boolean or
- A search combining two or more keywords that brings all results containing either word. Adding another keyword with Boolean or will increase your results. Web search engines sometimes call this "any of the words ...".
- browse search
- The computerized equivalent to visually scanning an alphabetized list, the browse search always brings back an alphabetized list matching the beginning words. Most library catalogs offer browse searching, especially for titles. Web search engines do not offer this type of search.
- controlled vocabulary
- Used for assigning subject headings (instead of just indexing words used within the documents.) Catalogers and indexers use controlled vocabulary lists to impose consistency. For instance, Library of Congress Subject Headings always uses the heading capital punishment, never death penalty or executions.
- explicit
- Using a command or special symbol to control how a search is done. Example: putting quotation marks around a phrase. Another example: using a special wildcard symbol to make the system truncate a search.
- field
- Category of data or information. Some tools allow you to search within a particular field, such as subject heading, abstract, journal title, or domain name.
- implicit
- Search methods that a system uses without special symbols. For example, if you search using several words, your search tool may be performing implicit Boolean or, looking for either word. In some contexts, this is referred to as the default mode.
- index
- In the context of searching, this means searching in a specified field of data. For example: an online catalog provides an author index, a title index, and a subject index. You can search specifically for authors, titles, or subjects.
- keyword
- A word that is important and specific for the topic you are searching. For many searching tools, a keyword must be spelled correctly. Choosing good keywords is the most part of an effective search strategy.
- keyword search
- In contrast to a browse search, a keyword search finds all the items that contain the search string anywhere within the field. You don't have to know the beginning word(s) to use a keyword search. A keyword search can be specific to a field (e.g. subject keyword search or title keyword search.) A general keyword search can find terms which occur practically anywhere in the database records.
- limit a search
- Some searching tools allow you to decrease the number of results you will get by special criteria, such as date, format, language, etc. Also called qualify a search.
- natural language search
- Some tools provide many implicit features in order to perform searches based on English sentences. For example: the search for Where can I find cheap airfare to New York? is interpreted by Ask Jeeves as cheap airfare.
- phrase search
- A search which retrieve documents in which the words occur together as a phrase, not separately. Results in fewer hits than the same words searched with Boolean and.
- proximity operators
- A search that looks for two or more keywords that occur close to each other (but not necessarily right together.)
- Example: a proximity search for california university
- might return:
-
University California
-
University of Southern California
-
California State University
- but not:
-
University of the Pacific campus in Stockton, California
- Not all searching tools offer the feature. This searching concept is also called adjacency.
- relevance
- Search results that not only match the keywords typed in, but are actually about the desired topic. Many search engines use complicated algorithms to try to improve relevancy.
- results
- The list of items found by a search. Also called hits.
- sort
- The order in which results are displayed, determining which results will be shown first. Some searching tools allow you to specify the sort order. Changing the sort order will not change the number of hits retrieved, but it will change which ones will be presented at the top of the list.
- stopwords, stoplist
- Words that a search tool ignores. For example, searching for reaching its limit in Infotrac will also retrieve reaching the limit, because its is a stopword for Infotrac keyword searches. Searching tools do not all use the same stoplist (list of stopwords.) For instance, the San Francisco Public Library catalog uses fewer stopwords than Infotrac keyword searches.
- truncation
- a search tool feature that looks for words or phrases that are longer than what has been entered. Example: typing librar to get librarian, librarians, libraries, library, The use of a special symbol for explicit truncation is often called a wildcard. The use of a complex truncation algorithm to compensate for spelling errors or for singular/plural is sometimes called stemming.
LIBR 51: Introduction to the Use of Libraries
This page last updated 25 January 2005
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