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ShareGeo Search Help
There are several ways to search for datasets within ShareGeo, using keywords or spatially or a combination of both.
Basic Keyword Search
Note: Use the * as a wildcard to improve search results e.g. to find everything beginning with geo, use geo*
The basic search functionality allows you to type in a word in the Search box and matching results will be returned. Wildcards and 'fuzzy' searching are enabled.
The word(s) you enter in the search box will be searched against the title, depositor, subject, abstract and identifier fields of each datasets record.
What is not searched
Stop Words: the search engine ignores certain words that occur frequently in English, but do not add value to the search. These are:
"a", "and" , "are" , "as" , "at" , "be" , "but" , "by" , "for" , "if" , "in" , "into",
"is" ,"it" ,"no" , "not" , "of" , "on" , "or" , "such", "the" , "to" , "was"
Truncation
Use an asterisk (*) after a word stem to get all hits having words starting with that root, for example:
select* will retrieve selects, selector, selectman, selecting.
Stemming
The search engine automatically expands words with common endings to include plurals, past tenses ...etc.
Phrase Searching
To search using multiple words as a phrase, put quotation marks (") around the phrase.
e.g. "world climate"
Exact word match
Put a plus (+) sign before a word if it MUST appear in the search result. For instance, in the following search the word "training" is optional, but the word "dog" must be in the result.
+dog training
Eliminate items with unwanted words
Put a minus (-) sign before a word if it should not appear in the search results. Alternatively, you can use NOT. This can limit your search to eliminate unwanted hits. For instance, in the search
training -cat or training NOT cat
you will get items containing the word "training", except those that also contain the word "cat".
Boolean searching
The following Boolean operators can be used to combine terms. Note that they must be CAPITALIZED !
AND - to limit searches to find items containing all words or phrases combined with this operator, e.g.
will retrieve all items that contain BOTH the words "cats" and "dogs".
OR - to enlarge searches to find items containing any of the words or phrases surrounding this operator
will retrieve all items that contain EITHER the words "cats" or "dogs".
NOT - to exclude items containing the word following this operator, e.g.
will retrieve all items that contain the word "training" EXCEPT those also containing the word "cat".
Parentheses can be used in the search query to group search terms into sets, and operators can then be applied to the whole set, e.g.
Geo Search
The Geo Search interface allows you to search for datasets spatially. To use the map interface to search for items, use the icons at the top left to pan and zoom, and drag the markers at the upper right and bottom left of the box displayed on the map to define an area you wish to use to search for items. You can also drag the map at any point to move to a different area. The interface looks like:
Alternatively, you can also type coordinates manually into the boxes below the map.
There are two options for specifying how the search retrieves items: 'within' and 'within and intersects'. 'Within' will only finds datasets that are wholly within the bounding box supplied, whereas 'within and intersect' will find datasets that are within or cross the bounding box.
Geo Search Results
The results for a Geo Search will look like those below:
To see more details of a particular search result item, either click on it's title in the Search Results panel underneath the map, or click on the marker associated with the datasets outline on the map and then click on the title displayed in the 'balloon'.
Advanced Geo Search
The advanced Geo Search combine the ability to search for keywords and spatially. Note: you must enter a keyword term. If you do not enter a keyword term no results will be returned.
