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Normal or Advanced searches
Operators
Words
Compound words
Hyphenated-words
Dates
Ranges in dates and numbers
Examples
Pitfall examples

Normal or Advanced searches

The default is Normal which means that the search will be performed on "all fields" while Advanced gives you the opportunity for fine tuning your search arguments by limiting them to certain fields only.

Operators

+ and & for operator AND (also the default)
/ and | for operator OR
- and ! for operator ANDNOT

Words

Wildcards are the '?' for one character and the '*' for zero or more characters and they can be used anywhere in the string. All meaningless symbols like the ; * @ . : / ? # & etcetera will be skipped in indexing, so you have to search for U.K. by typing UK (or uk of course).

Compound words

As only indexes made by the IHS library catalogue are used, there is no possibility for an Adjacent operator. IHS library catalogue itself provides a way to index compound keys by linking the words by an underscore (olympic_games) which mechanism is supported by CardWeb as well.

Hyphenated-words

The default collating sequence used by IHS library catalogue for indexing, creates three index entries for the string 'on-line': on, line & online. So if you are looking for such words, please enter the whole string without the hyphen because the '-' is reserved for the ANDNOT operator.

Dates

Here no wildcards though there is the ':' wildcard for ranges (see below). In a IHS library catalogue database the separators '/', '-' and '.' are used to store a date in the following formats:

dd/mm/yyyy  	mm-dd-yyyy  	yyyy.mm.dd. 

While the '/' and '-' are reserved for the operators OR and ANDNOT, you must surround your search string with the double quote to strip these characters of their special meaning (i.e. "04/07/1976"). You are nevertheless allowed to use all the three formats to specify your search.

Ranges in dates and numbers

In dates and numbers you can use the colon ':' meaning "from up-to". Let's suppose that we need all year 2000 dates, stored in the format dd/mm/yyyy, you can then ask "01/01/2000:31/12/2000" (2000:2001 will do also).

Examples

Organi?ation Retrieves both organization and organisation
inst* Retrieves institute and all strings starting with 'inst' like institution and instant
s*n Retrieves soon, but also sin, son, sun, seen, swan, satisfaction and so_on...
*room Retrieves bedroom and all strings ending with 'room' like classroom and headroom
housing /development +india Retrieves both housing and development in India
housing /development -india Retrieves both housing and development not in India
"housing development" Retrieves housing_development
housing_development Retrieves housing_development

Pitfall examples

housing development Which means for IHS library catalogue: housing AND development
22/07/1999 Which means for IHS library catalogue: 22 OR 07 OR 1999
"04-07-1976" Which means for IHS library catalogue: the 7th of April 1976 (and not the 4th of July 1976)
"2?/07/1999" Has no meaning for IHS library catalogue and will retrieve nothing (use "20/07/1999:29/07/1999")
on-line Which means for IHS library catalogue: on ANDNOT line (it is better to use online)

Comments and/or requests can be directed to: Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, P.O. Box 1935, 3000 BX Rotterdam, The NetherlandsTelephone: +31 10 408 9857/36, Fax: +31 10 408 9826 E-mail: library@ihs.nl / n.browne@ihs.nl / s.welsh@ihs.nl