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Search help

searching the contents of the pandora archive

Basic Searching

On all PANDORA pages there is a single search box in which you can enter search keywords and phrases. You can simply enter the term(s) or phrase(s) you wish to search for or you can enter search terms or phrases together with search modifiers such as Boolean operators, proximity operators, wildcards and field limits.

Keyword (Boolean) Searching

To search keywords just enter the words you wish to search. The default Boolean operator for keyword searching is AND. You do not need to type this operator as it is the default. So, if you search using the words hide cheek the result will be pages which include both those words. If you wish to use other Boolean operators you need to type them in using capital letters, i.e. OR, NOT

Phrase Searching

To search for a phrase enclose the phrase in double quotations marks, e.g. “hide and seek” will return pages which include the phrase hide and seek. Note that in this case 'and' does not function as a Boolean operator as it is within a phrase and is in lower case letters.

You can combine phrases with other phrases or keywords using Boolean operators.

Proximity Operators

To use the proximity operator enclose the search phrase in double quotation marks followed by a tilde (~) and the number of allowed intervening words. For example, e.g. “hide cheek”~2 will return pages with the words hide and cheek in a phrase within two words of each other, such as 'hide and cheek', 'hide and the cheek', 'cheek to hide'.

Wildcard Searches

Wildcard searching includes single character wildcard searching using the question mark symbol (?) and multiple character wildcard searching using the asterisk symbol (*).

The single character wildcard search looks for matching terms with the single character replaced. For example, the search te?t will return matching pages with the words test or tent or text.

The multiple character wildcard search looks for zero or more characters. For example the search test* will return matching pages with the terms test or tests or testing.

Searchng Title Fields

To refine your search to search on just the the HTML title field (<TITLE>) precede your search term or search phrase with the work title followed by a colon, i.e. title:"hide and cheek"

Advanced Search Page

The Advanced Search page includes a search box like the basic search in which you can enter search terms and include search term modifiers as described above. The Advanced Search page also includes limit options including limiting by archive date. It also includes the ability to search by URL.

The search engine used for PANDORA full text searching is Lucene and most of the standard Apache Lucene query syntax can be used in the PANDORA Advances Search options

Search Limiting

The Advanced Search page allows you to limit your search:

  1. By title, by clicking the Titles Only checkbox
  2. To a PANDORA subject category, by selecting the category from the Pandora Subject Category drop-down box
  3. To pages archived between specified dates, by using the date selection drop-down boxes.

URL Searches

You can search for an URL by using the Search URLs option on the Advanced Search page. The URL search can also be limited to pages archived between specified dates by using the date selection drop-down boxes.

Search Results

The search results include:

If the search result includes a 'title entry page' it will appear at the top of the search results list and only display a link to the 'title entry page'.