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Basic search

File:Um4-1SearchBox.png

Enter a term in the Search box

File:Um4-1SearchResults.png

Search results screen

Use the Search box to find records in ICA-AtoM that contain text matching any keyword or phase. The Search box is available on every screen for every user.

1. Enter search text in the Search box.

2. Click the Search button.

3. ICA-AtoM searches all fields in all archival descripitons and returns matches on a Search results screen (list). This shows:

• The number of descriptions found.
• For each match, the description title and the first three lines of the "Scope and content" field.

4. Click a title to view the full description (routes you to the record's View screen).

Limitations:

• You can only search archival descriptions; you cannot currently search authority records, archival institutions, or terms.

• You cannot save the search results.

• There is no Advanced search screen. But see below for advanced search techniques that can be used in the basic Search box.

Future releases of ICA-AtoM (post-1.0) will address these limitations.

Advanced search

ICA-AtoM uses the Zend framework's implementation of the the Lucene search engine. This provides a number of options for advanced searching from within the Search box. For a full description of the features Zend's Lucene search supports, see:

• Zend Programmers Reference Guide, chapter 33: Zend_search_Lucene.

What follows is a selection of some of the most commonly used tools.

Phrases

• Use double quotes ("searchTerm") to search phrases.
• E.g. Search "city hall" to return records containing these two words together in that exact order.

Boolean operators

• Use AND to combine search terms to narrow your search: e.g. vancouver AND "city hall" returns only descriptions that contain both search terms.
• Use OR to to combine search terms to broaden your search: e.g. vancouver OR "city hall" returns descriptions that contain either search term.
• Use NOT to exclude terms: e.g. vancouver NOT "city hall" returns records descriptions that include vancouver but do not include the phase "city hall".
• Boolean operators need not be uppercase.
• You can substitute symbols for words: && (AND), || (OR), ! (NOT).
• Other Boolean operators are available; see Zend's documentation.

Last revised: 3 June 2008 (ICA-AtoM v0.6)