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Search Help

More Help:
Selecting What to Search
Searching For a Phrase
Requiring an Exact Match on Case
Requiring or Excluding Terms
Refining a Search
Limiting a Search to a Specific Field
Search Syntax Summary
Changing the Sort Default
Showing or Hiding Summaries
Feedback

It's easy to search. Just type in a few words and select Search or press Enter. The more words you give, the better results you'll get. Here is an example:

migration emulation costs

The search will find items containing as many of these words as possible, ranked so that the items most relevant to your query are presented first. Don't worry about missing an item because it doesn't have one of the words in your search - the search will use advanced weighting techniques to return relevant results even if they don't contain all the query terms.

To select what to search:

There are three collections to search:

PADI Database

A search of the PADI Database will retrieve a list of resources that have been indexed for PADI that meet your search criteria. The search will be based on metadata about the resource stored in our PADI database. You would search the PADI Database if you were interested in finding quality resources dealing in a substantial way with a given topic, as assessed by our subject indexers. You can also limit a search to a specific field in the PADI Database.

PADI Topics

A search of PADI Topics will retrieve a list of pages on this site relating to a specific topic from the PADI Thesaurus: for example, the Emulation page or the Authenticity page. You would select PADI Topics if you were interested in obtaining an overview of a given topic and browsing related resources.

Linked Web Sites

A search of linked Web sites will retrieve pages from resources indexed for PADI that contain words or phrases that meet your search criteria: for example, a phrase search on David Bearman will retrieve Museums and the Web 2000 because David was a speaker at that conference and is listed on the conference homepage. You would search linked resources if you were interested in finding information even if it was not the main subject of the resource.

The PADI Database is the default collection but you can select one of the other collections to search by checking the appropriate option button.

To search for a phrase:

A phrase can be entered as a search term using double quotation marks:

"technological obsolescence"

You can enter multiple phrases by separating each phrase with a comma:

"preservation strategies", "storage media"

You can also combine words and phrases in a single search:

"preservation strategies" migration emulation

To require an exact match on case:

Use UPPER case to require an exact match on case.

"Jo Bushnell" CHArt

Search terms in lowercase will match words in any case, otherwise, an exact case match is used. For example, chart will find matches for Chart, chart and CHArt, whereas CHArt will only match CHArt (an acronym for Computers and the History of Art).

To Require or Exclude Terms:

When you search for words or phrases, the search will look for any of the terms in the document or PADI database record and then rank the results so that items with the most terms are presented first.

Requiring a term to be present

You can require a term to be present by using the + sign; for example:

+conference +Frankfurt metadata "Dublin Core"

In this example, returned documents or records must have the words "conference" and "Frankfurt" in them and may have either the word "metadata" or the phrase "Dublin Core". This ensures that the most relevant items are presented first.

Excluding a term

You can exclude a word from the returned documents or records by using the - sign; for example:

+pdf archival archiving -"electronic records"

In this example, returned items must have the word "pdf" in them and either the word "archival" or "archiving" but not the phrase "electronic records". This ensures that the returned items deal with pdf as an archival format in relation to other kinds of resources than electronic records.

To Refine a Search:

It is easy to refine a query to get precisely the results you want.

Searching Within the Initial Results

You can refine a query immediately after you have done a search using the facility to "Search within these results" at the bottom of the page. This will search for the terms you have already specified plus the additional terms you enter now; for example

Original Search: "preservation strategies"
Search Within These Results: migration encapsulation

This will return only documents from the original result set that contain the words "migration" or "encapsulation".

Trying again

If your first search did not work there may be another technique you can use that will get better results.

To Limit a Search to a Specific Field:

When searching the PADI Database, you can restrict searches to certain portions of a record by limiting a search to a specific field. The field name should be in lower case, and immediately followed by a colon. There should be no spaces after the colon and before the search terms. For example:

title:digital
title:"digital library"
title:+"digital library" +California

The fields applicable when searching the PADI Database are:

Name Description Use
Title Looks for matches in the Title field Limiting a query to Title will give you more precise results. This is the most powerful query refinement technique
Subject Looks for matches in the Subject or keyword fields Limiting a query to Subject will ensure that a high proportion of the records you retrieve describe resources that are on the subject you are interested in rather than only indirectly related.
Name Looks for matches in the Creator, Contributor or Publisher fields Limiting a query to Name will ensure you only retrieve records where the person or organisation you are interested in had a substantial role in the creation or dissemination of the resource described
Type Looks for matches in the PADI Type field Limiting a query to Type will ensure that you only retrieve records of a given type. Allowed values for type in the PADI record are: article; bibliography; case study; discussion list; event; glossary; journal; organisation; policy/strategy/guideline; project; web site

Search syntax summary:

+

term 1 term 2 ... Specifies that one or more of the terms must be found for a match to occur. Items containing all terms will be listed first in the result set display video videorecording "moving picture" "motion picture"
"word1 word2 ..." Enables a term to be entered as a phrase consisting of adjacent words "storage media"
+term Requires a term to be present for a match to occur +"storage media" DVD CD-R
-term Excludes items containing a term "storage media" -CDROM -CD-ROM
fieldname:term Specifies that the term must be found in that field. See listing of fieldnames in the tables above. title:"storage media"

Lowercase terms match any case, otherwise case is matched exactly as typed.

To change the sort default:

You can change the sort default from the Results Page by clicking on the sort by ... button or by using the tab key to highlight the button and then pressing Enter.

To show or hide summaries:

You can change the display to show or hide summaries from the Results Page by clicking on the ...summaries button or by using the tab key to highlight the button and then pressing Enter.

Feedback:

We welcome feedback on problems you may have finding information on PADI through this search service. This will help us to refine the service to meet your needs.

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