1. Type in Search Keyword
2. Select the appropriate search type (Author, Title or Anywhere)
3. Click the Search button

Keyword Search

It will allow the user to search on Title, Author, or either of them by selecting 'Anywhere'. Users are allowed to submit up to three keywords with Boolean operators "and", "or" or "not" . Users may also limit their searches by a certain date, or a range of dates, on certain journals and number of records displayed for a result list. After using keyword search, users will see a list of titles for their particular search term or string.

Some Search Concepts

Keyword Searching - refers to the ability to search on any word in a particular field. For example in, "The Days of Wine and Roses", the word "roses" is the 6th word. However keyword searches allow a user to search on "roses," and still retrieve this title.

Set Phrase Search - Keyword Searching in this database has been set to recognize a string of search terms, with no intervening Boolean operators, as set phrases. These search terms must match terms in the data, in the exact order as entered. Please consider these two examples, when searching on "Chinese language".

• This title, "Chinese language curriculum in Hong Kong" would be retrieved because the two search terms occur, and are in the same order, one following the other, as in the search string.
• This title, "English language teaching in Chinese secondary schools" would not be retrieved because the two search terms [Chinese language], although occurring in this title, do not occur in the same order as in the search string.

If the user does not want to use set phrase searching, then Boolean operators should be used; such as, "Chinese and language".

Boolean Operators - And, or, and not, are the Boolean operators supported in this database. If it is necessary to do a string search on one of these words acting not as a Boolean operator, then brackets must be used. For example, "{would not want any political change}" will allow search using "not" in its lexical sense, rather than in its Boolean function. Please note that "and" is stopworded and cannot be searched in its lexical sense.

• and - example: "boat and food", will return documents that contain both "boat" and "food". These search terms may be adjacent to each other, or not; but must occur in the same document. Please refer above to "Set Phrase Search".
• or - example: "dragon or boat", will return documents that contain either or both "dragon" or "boat."
• not - example: "boat not dragon," will return documents that contain "boat" but not "dragon"

Wildcard Character - The "*" symbol is wildcarded. Therefore a search on "teach*" will return documents with "teach," "teachers," "teaching," etc. A search on "*view" will return documents with "overview," "review," "underview," etc.

Case Insensitivity - is used throughout all the indexes. Therefore searches on "Hong Kong" or "hoNg kOnG" will retrieve the same results.

Stopwords - used in this database are listed below. A search of "I want to be free", would only actually search on "I want be free". It is also not possible to search on ponctoation, such as periods, hyphens, ampersands, etc.

• and,
• the,
• of, and
• to.

Nesting - It is possible to combine several Boolean operators into one search with parentheses. For example, "(elections or electioneering) and (China or Taiwan)."