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The Caltech Archives search feature allows full text search by relevance, search by exact text via double quotes, as well as inclusion and exclusion operators, "+" and "-", to include and exclude particular words. All search features can be mixed and matched in the same search to allow you to fine tune search results. A search query field is available at the bottom of each Archives web page (including this one). As you read these instructions you might like to try out various searches. From any search box, click "Search Help" to get back to this page. To do a basic search, simply type terms describing what you would like to find. The search system will match all items that match any of your terms and, crucially, show those that match more of your terms near the top of your search results. For example, the search Merrill Wind Tunnels will find all mentions of A. A. Merrill, wind, and tunnel or tunnels. Crucially, items mentioning all three will appear toward the top of the search results. Items mentioning two out of three will appear next, and so on. This is a very efficient way of quickly getting a lot of information. When using the basic search, the more search terms you use the better. The basic search does have limitations, however. In order to properly rate the relevance of items found, basic searches ignore words with 3 or fewer characters. That means that words such as "and" and "the" aren't counted in basic searches, which is good, but also that the search Peter Fay doesn't work as expected because "Fay" is too short and so is ignored by a basic search (The basic search Peter Fay finds all occurences of "Peter"). To search for all materials involving Peter Fay, use the inclusion operator "+". The search Peter +Fay finds all items that have "Peter" and that have "Fay". Note, while the basic search will find items that match any terms in a search, any word with a "+" in front of it must be in the search results. So, for example, the search Einstein Millikan finds all items that contain Einstein, Millikan, or both terms. The search +Einstein +Millikan by contrast only finds items that have both terms. Note, there is a space between the two terms in the search +Einstein +Millikan. The "+" and "-" operators must be the first character in a word to function, otherwise the system will look for them in the text. For example, to search for materials about "Project-4" you could use the search +Project-4. The leading "+" is the inclusion operator, the "-" character in the middle of the word is simply interpreted as text, not an operator, because it is not at the beginning of a word. Use "-" to exclude words. For example, to find all mentions of Walter Newton, but excluding anything that mentions Isaac Newton, use the search +Walter +Newton -Isaac. The "-" only looks at whole words. So the search Linus Pauling -war would find Linus Pauling materials that don't mention war, but it wouldn't exclude Linus Pauling materials that mentioned "wartime" (which starts with "war" but is a different word so is not excluded by the "-" operater.) Finally, double quotes allow you to find exact text. So, for example, the search "theory of the earth" finds records that have that exact text in them in exactly that order. Capitalization of terms doesn't matter in exact text searches. Be careful when using double quoted searches to not exclude items you are interested in. For example, the search "wind tunnels" will find only items with that exact sequence of characters. It won't find an item that includes "wind tunnel" (singular). Searching for "wind tunnel" on the other hand will find "wind tunnels" as "wind tunnel" is included in that text. Double quotes override exclusion and inclusion operators. So a search for "+" finds items that have a plus sign in them, it doesn't invoke the inclusion operator. As mentioned before, search types can be mixed and matched. To find all references to William Whiston's "A New Theory of the Earth" (published in 1737), you might search for +Whiston "theory of the earth". |
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