Searcher

“ Those who have had occasion to search into the records of the 18th century know the difficulties which confront the searcher, especially in writing for the first time the life of a man like Woodes Rogers. ”

“ Yet this will make his task much more difficult if the contents of the book, or series of books, are a miscellany of different legal topics, such as the Year Books, or the Parliament Rolls.1 He can, if he likes, take refuge in a general reference to the whole series, and leave the searcher after information to find it for himself; but this involves an amount of labour on the part of generations of searchers quite disproportionate to the time needed for anyone with an average legal education to make an index once and for all. ”

“ Entries, based on information contributed by archives, individuals, and libraries, can be searched by keyword in basic Search; Advanced Search allows searching by keyword, contributor (name, type, and location) , resource type or medium, and date. In addition, searchers can browse five lists (click Explore Collections) : subjects, contributors, locations, people (individuals, families, and organizations) , and tags contributed by users of the site. A full entry includes title of collection; author of the documents; holder of the collection (with shelf list and contact information) ”

“ What about finding information on the internet? "The internet has provided researchers with a vast database of information. The problem for them is to find what they are seeking. Never has the information overload been so obvious as when one tries to find information on a topic by searching the internet. When one uses a search engine like Lycos or AltaVista or a directory like Yahoo!, it soon becomes clear that it can be very difficult to find valuable sites on a given topic. ”

“ Each subset allows searchers to combine a variety of fields and limit searches; for example, the Advanced Search screen for searching plays has fields for full text keyword, title, availability of full text, unpublished plays, date of composition, playwright, gender, nationality, race, translator, lyricist, composer, librettist, author of book for a musical, conceiver, all contributors, publication date, year of first production, medium, genre, original language, setting, performers, character names, theater, production company, subject, and record code ”

“ Although the subject and geographic area searches are limited by the taxonomy of vols. 1–33 and by the indexes since vol. 34, although records for essays from edited collections lack a full citation and are (inexcusably) not linked to main-entry records, and although the search interface is cumbersome, the online version keeps searchers from having to slog through stacks of printed volumes. ”

“ Because of the number of abbreviations, users will need frequent recourse to the list; because the list has to be accessed through the Table of Contents page, searchers should load the Abbreviations page in a separate browser tab. To obtain full details about a work, users must cut and paste from too many indexes; access would be measurably improved by conflating many of the separate lists, expanding abbreviations, and providing a basic search engine. Additions and corrections appear at Contento’s Mystery Short Fiction (http://www.philsp.com/homeville/msf/0start.htm) . ”

“ Two indexes: scholars; writers and other individuals not separately classified in the first division. Researchers would benefit from a more refined classification system and greater currency (the lag is currently five to six years) .
The online version can be searched by document author, title keyword, date, subject, geographic area, and persons; before using the last three search fields, users should consult the Help file. Results can be sorted by author (ascending) , date (descending) , or theme (apparently, subject headings) . Records can be printed or copied to a file but not e-mailed. ”

“ Advanced Search (which allows a keyword search of a variety of record fields to be limited by date, century, content type, title of publication, document type, language, and target audience and to peer-reviewed publications) ; Person Search (which allows a search for a person to be limited by gender, date of birth, date of death, ethnicity, genre, literary movement or period, nationality, occupation, place of birth, place of death, century, and subject or theme) ”

“ For example, if you are writing an article about a musical group, performing a full text search will return all articles in the database that mention the band. Full-text searches are often helpful when you are researching an obscure topic. If there is little published research on your topic or it does not have a keyword in the database, for example, full-text searches can help you find scattered references to the topic that you might not otherwise have found. Keyword searches return a list of articles where the database host entered your search term as a keyword. ”

“ You've thought through your research question and decided to use the Internet to find information either because you've already tried traditional sources without success or you believe the Internet is your best option. You're sitting in front of your terminal, you've logged onto the Internet and you're staring at a blank screen. Now what? Let's start with a (relatively) easy type of search. You need to find general information about a fairly broad topic. Let's say you need to research a broad topic unfamiliar to you, for example, Java. ”

“ I think it was at this stage of our operations that each man began very seriously to doubt whether we were searching in the right place at all, and whether there might not be some further clue that was missing, and, without which, search would almost certainly be futile. ”

“ The large number of online offerings is bewildering. To be successful, you must have a sound search strategy. Your first task is to locate useful SOURCES of information. The next, to decide how best to find that specific piece of information online. You must PLAN your search. Although one source of information, like an online database, is supposed to cover your area of interest, it may still be unable to give you what you want. ”

“ Too few, and we haven't divided things at all; too many and readers get tired before they can get through the whole list. When someone is Google searching how does he set the default for the number of hits on a page, and how many Google pages does he look through before giving up? What are the hazards of search terms that are either too broad or too specific? The problems that we need to address are not too different from those in Google searches. ”

“ Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online includes all entrants in the published volumes as well as selected biographies from forthcoming ones. The Keyword Search screen allows keyword searching of the full text and browsing by surname, geographic area, profession, or race; the Advanced Search screen allows searching by name, gender, date range of death, keywords, and—for some biographees—by geographic area, profession, or race (consult the respective help screens for details) . ”

“ These search mechanisms work well if one is searching for something very precise, such as information on a person who has an unusual name, but they produce a confusing number of references if one is searching for a topic which can be quite broad. ”

“ There is one who understands their intent to be that the preferred practice is to search at night (Magen Avraham, comment 3) . This explanation does not suffice, since we already have seen established that searching by sunlight is for those who did not search at night [and why then the repetition?] ”

“ And consider the joy of finding things you don't hope to find. You, sir, sitting at your spotless desk, with your ordered and labelled shelves about you, and your files and your letter-racks, and your card indexes and your cross references, and your this, that, and the other—what do you know of the delights of which I speak? You do not come suddenly and ecstatically upon the thing you seek. You do not know the shock of delighted discovery. ”

“ It is fundamental that the search include the most logical source of information—those persons with immediate access to necessary facts who are willing to cooperate in the interest of the common good. ”

“ Searches can be limited to full-text records or separately published works (i.e., books) ; results can be ordered by date, title, book, or electronic resource (i.e., books or electronic resources will appear at the head of the list, followed by other records in descending chronological order) . Users who need to perform more than a simple search should study the Search Tips screen. Users should note that AustLit plans to release a new search interface in spring 2013. ”

“ Most search fields support the * and ? wildcards; no search field allows for Boolean operators. Most search functions are intuitive, but users wanting to perform sophisticated searches—especially in the People search screen—will want to study the clear explanations of search protocols in the Help screen or read Rupert Mann, “Searching the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography” (Indexer 25.1 [2006] : 16–18) , an explanation of the metadata that supports searches. ”

“ Personally I think the search box adds value to works such as dictionaries, newspaper articles, encyclopaedias and such collective works where multiple subjects are treated of and a search would help you find what you're looking for. ”

“ And the other is that in every such search, be it successful or not, the inquirer, who is wide awake, is sure to come upon material that is even more valuable than what he looks for; makes discoveries that are not less delightful because they are accidental. ”

“ As of 2014, more than 17,000,000 citations from over 2,000 publications covering more than 5,000,000 people, living and dead, the majority of whom are American or British. Users can search the database from two screens: a basic name search and the Advanced Search (with fields for name, prefix or suffix, printed source, and full-text keyword; all searches can be limited by year of birth and year of death and to entries with portraits) . ”

“ Those months of unavailing search stood always out luridly in his memory, and because his search was a thing that could accommodate itself to no rule except to follow faint trails into all sorts of places, he grew to an astonishing familiarity with parts at least of the town whose boast it is that no man knows it. ”