 Help on full text searching |
Search by word
A combination of up to four words or phrases can by used to conduct free text searches. The option any will find records which contain any of the words, while the option all will only find records that contain all of the words. A word may be excluded from an all type search by entering an exclamation mark (!) before the word.
For example,
| Typing these words... | ...with this option... | ...finds documents that contain |
| cat dog fish | all | all three of these words (cat and dog and fish) |
| cat dog fish | any | at least one of these words (cat or dog or fish) |
| cat dog !fish | all | both the first words, but not the last (cat and dog but not fish) |
Note on searching for dates
Each record in the database contains a date, or range of dates, that describes when the historical material was created. The format of these date is different for each form, or level of description in the database. This is because a creation date that specifes day, month and year is inappropriate for a large body of material, such as a Series or Sub-Series. The following table illustrates the format of dates for each form, and examples of dates to be used for searches.
| Form | Date format | Examples of date searches |
| Series | year | 1942 (not '42 or 42) |
| Sub-Series | year | 1941 (not '41 or 41) |
| Folder | month/year | 12/1945, 05/1944 (not 5/1944) |
| Item | day/month/year | 23/11/1945, 01/06/1944 (not 1/5/1944) |
Search by form
Users may limit a search by AJRP form. If a user is interested in Series descriptions, that is descriptions of a large body of material, then selecting the Series option will limit the results to records at the Series level. Other options, that is Sub-Series, Folder or Item, will limit search results to successively smaller units of description. Note that these options must be conducted in combination with a search by word. In other words, conducting a search for Items without specifying a word to search will result in an error. It will not return all the Item records in the database.
Advanced searching
Notes provides several further options for more advanced text searching. These are outlined in the following table, and should be entered as one string in the word input field.
| Typing any of these... | Finds... |
| NOT not ! | records that do not contain the condition or word following NOT |
| AND and & | records that contain both the conditions or words separated by AND |
| OR or | | records that contain either of the conditions or words separated by OR |
| ACCRUE accrue , (comma) | the same records as OR, but increases the relevance ranking of a record when the record contains more than one matching conditon or word |
| @ | records which contain both of the words that are separated by @, as long as the words are next to each other in the records. (Do not place spaces between @ and either word.) |
The AJRP has wound up its activities at the Memorial for the moment. Please contact the relevant officer of the Australian War Memorial for assistance. Internet implementation by Fulton Technology and AJRP staff . Visit the Australian War Memorial home page. |