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The following tips will help you to improve your search results:
Be specific. When looking for items about Bergen-Belsen, enter both words in your search. Entering just ‘Belsen’, may not produce results specifically concerned with Bergen-Belsen. The table above shows that adding more search terms provides fewer, more accurate search results. Consider Language. The majority of the collection is presented in English, with some German, French and Polish. In order to retrieve all relevant items you should enter your search term in a variety of languages, for example, ‘French AND Français AND Francese’. Find an exact phrase with the help of the PRE operator. You can narrow your searches by requiring that the search terms appear as a phrase in the order that you typed them. For example, when looking for items that discuss Bergen-Belsen’s liberation, search for these words as a phrase, ‘Bergen-Belsen PRE/10 liberation’. This query finds the term ‘Bergen-Belsen’ where it precedes within 10 characters or character spaces of the word ‘liberation’. Mix phrases and single search terms in the search box. For example, enter ‘Bergen-Belsen’s liberation AND relief’. Broaden your search by using the OR operator. Use the OR search operator to retrieve items that contain one or both specified search terms. This operator places no condition on where the terms are found in relation to one another; however, one or both terms must appear somewhere in the field you are searching. For example, a full text search for ‘military OR collaboration’ will find items that mention ‘military’, items that mention ‘collaboration’, and items that mention both. Use plural or other word endings. For example, when looking for information on Jews, search for various forms of the word using the OR operator as the connector, e.g. enter ‘Jew OR Jews OR Jewish’. It is also possible, depending on the desired search term, to use the truncation (or wildcard) feature to retrieve multiple forms of a word, e.g. enter ‘Jew*’. Try using synonyms for your original words. For example, enter “surrender“ or “rebellious“. Check your spelling. If you type sirrender instead of surrender, your search won’t find any matches, unless you have activated some level of fuzzy searching.
The search engine is not case sensitive. The use of capitalization does not affect the results of a search.
A Hyphen (-) used between two words is considered part of the term. When searching for a word or phrase that normally contains a hyphen, include the hyphen, e.g. "Bergen-Belsen" Ampersands (&) are recognized by the search engine as the operator AND. Inverted commas should be used when a phrase contains Boolean operators (OR, AND or NOT), e.g. “war and peace”.
Post-War Europe: Refugees, Exile and Resettlement, 1945-1950 supports searching on and display of diacritics – letters that include phonetic markings, e.g. á, ô, ü, etc. – and special characters such as Æ and ø, which often occur in foreign-language terms and names. Searching on a term that includes a diacritic, such as ‘attaché’, will return results matching both ‘attaché’ and ‘attache’. Likewise, a search on ‘attache’ will return results matching both ‘attache’ and ‘attaché’. Diacritics can be included in a search term or phrase by either copying and pasting a term containing a diacritic into the search term box, or by typing the diacritic using special combinations of keys on a standard keyboard. A useful document that provides information on using a standard keyboard to produce diacritics and other special characters, Typing Accents and Special Characters, is available online from Pennsylvania State University.
Truncation (Wildcard) Characters The * (asterisk) and ? (question mark) are used to search for words or numbers sharing a similar pattern. The * and ? replace alphabetical and numerical characters. The * (standing for any number of characters) is placed anywhere within a word to retrieve various forms of that word. For example, the term ‘Jew*’ retrieves items that contain the words ‘Jew’, ‘Jews’, or ‘Jewish’. The term ‘ap*ed’ retrieves items that contain the words ‘applied’ and ‘approved’. The term ‘*cipl*’ retrieves items that contain the words ‘principle’, and ‘participle’. The ? is used to replace any character within a word to retrieve various forms of that word. For example, the term ‘wom?n’ retrieves items that contain either ‘woman’ or ‘women’.
A date range is used to limit your search to items created within a specified date range. Users can input a year or a range of years or select dates from the pop-up calendars. The date range for the archive is limited to 1945-1950.
The Boolean search operators AND, OR, NOT, and proximity operators may be used to refine your search. Whether the operators are typed in uppercase or lowercase does not affect the search. Please note, that if an operator appears in a string of words you are searching for, such as ‘war and peace’, it will still be interpreted as a search operator. This may lead to irrelevant results. If you are searching for a string that contains a search operator, enclose the string in quotation marks, e.g. “war and peace”. AND Use the AND search operator to retrieve items that contain both of the specified search terms. This operator places no condition on where the terms are found in relation to one another. However, both terms have to appear somewhere in the field you are searching. For example, a full text search for ‘military AND collaboration’ will find any item that contains mention both of ‘military’ and ‘collaboration’. OR Use the OR search operator to retrieve items that contain one or both specified search terms. This operator places no condition on where the terms are found in relation to one another; however, one or both terms must appear somewhere in the field you are searching. For example, a full text search for ‘military OR collaboration’ will find items that mention ‘military’, items that mention ‘collaboration’, and items that mention both. NOT Use the NOT search operator to retrieve items that do not contain the specified term. For example, a full text search for ‘military NOT collaboration’ will find items that mention ‘military’ but not ‘collaboration’. PARENTHESES The operators described above each operate on either simple terms (words or phrases) or a more complex query delimited by parentheses ( ). Parentheses allow you to construct very powerful queries. For example, ‘Auschwitz AND ((Buchenwald AND Birkenau) OR liberation)’. Boolean operators are applied in the order in which they appear. Therefore, the following searches are equivalent: • Auschwitz AND liberation OR Buchenwald • (Auschwitz AND liberation) OR Birkenau
The proximity operators PRE (Preceding) and W (within) may be used to refine your search: The PRE operator will find items containing the specified words in the specified order within the number of characters you indicate. For example, ‘Birkenau pre/4 liberation’ finds items that contain the word ‘Birkenau’ preceding the word ‘liberation’ within four words. This function can be vital in returning accurate results from typed or handwritten documents, which can often present irregularities of character spacing.
The W operator will find items containing the specified words in any order within the number of words you indicate. For example, ‘Birkenau w/4 liberation’ finds items that contain the word ‘Birkenau’ within four words of the word ‘liberation’, regardless of their order (that is, ‘liberation’ could precede or follow ‘Birkenau’). The length of any given field is not limited to the window you see on the screen. As a search term or terms are keyed, the text will continue to scroll to the left, so that you can see the search expression as it is being keyed. Search terms or phrases entered cannot exceed one hundred characters or twelve words. |