International Council Finding the Spirit of the place

16th General Assembly and International Scientific Symposium

Quebec, Canada, September 29 – October 4, 2008

Getting started

When you want to perform a search and find documents you are looking for, you basically type one or more keywords in the search box and click the 'Search' button.

Search for all of these words:
Search for any of these words:
Search for this exact phrase:
Search in:  

Additionally, you can also use a number of available options and operators, like wildcards, Boolean operators or a phrase search, to make your search even more precise and get better matching results. This way you can search for documents that...
· contain ALL of the keywords you type in (the AND operator)
· contain at least one of the keywords you type in (the OR operator)
· contain the exact phrase you enter (phrase search)
· do NOT contain a specified keyword (the NOT operator)
· contain a word matching a specified pattern (wildcards)

Below you can find a more detailed description of each operator:

AND

This Boolean operator allows searching for documents that contains all of the specified keywords. For example, a search on dog AND cat will return results that contain the words dog and cat in the contents. Note that when the all words options that is available below the search box is selected (see the picture above), the use of the AND operator in a query is not necessary.

OR

This operator allows you to search for documents that contain a least one of the specified keywords. For example, a search on dog OR cat will yield results that contain the word dog or the word cat in the contents. Note that when the any words option that is available below the search box is selected (see the picture above) you can omit the OR operator.

NOT

Using this operator allows to search for documents that don't contain the specified word. For example, searching for dog NOT cat will return results that contain the word dog but don't contain the word cat.

Phrase search

You can create a phrase search by surrounding the keywords that build the phrase with quotation marks ("...") or by selecting the exact phrase option. Phrase search allows to find documents that contain the words in exactly the same order as typed in the query. For example, searching for "big car" will return results that contain the word big just before the word car.

Wildcards (*, ?)

Wildcard characters are a special type of operators that you can use in your query to stand in for one or multiple characters. The ? wildcard matches a single character and the * wildcard matches multiple characters. By using these operators you can search for words starting with, ending with, or containing a given letter sequence. For example, searching for comput* will yield results that contain words like computer, computers, computing and searching for *tribut? will match words like contribute, attribute or distribute.

You can of course use a combination of the operator presented above to create even more advanced search queries. Below you will find a few samples:
· (dog and not cat) or (best and pet) - this matches the documents that contain dog but don't contain cat or contain both best and pet.
· car (door or window) - this query will match documents that contain the word car and at least one of the words door and window.