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Search Help
Overview
The most basic search is case-insensitive and searches for terms in any field:
red figure
Enclosing terms with quotation marks will search for a phrase in any field:
"red figure"
You can perform single and multiple character wildcard searches within single terms (not within phrases). To perform a single character wildcard search use the "?" symbol. To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the "*" symbol.
The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced. For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the search:
te?t
Multiple character wildcard searches look for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for test, tests or tester, you can use the search:
test*
You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term:
te*t
Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.
Field Searches
Field searches can be performed by specifying a field name followed by a colon ":" and then the term(s) you are looking for. This search will find all documents with the term "Lekythos" in the Title field:
title:Lekythos
Note: The field is only valid for the term that directly precedes it, so the query:
title:red figure
will find the term "red" in the Title field and the term "figure" in any field. If you want to search for a phrase in a field, use quotation marks:
title:"red figure"
The collection field names (see list at left) are those defined within each collection. Collection field names are case-insensitive and are written with no spaces when used for field searching. For example, this will search for an object with Inventory Number P 42:
inventorynumber:"P 42"
Collection fields are also mapped to equivalent Dublin Core fields (see list at left). Searching a Dublin Core field is equivalent to searching multiple fields or similar but non-identical fields from different collections. For example, the Title field and the Caption field are both mapped to the Dublin Core Title field: dc-title. This allows you to search both fields at once with:
dc-title:inscription
You can also combine searches with the boolean operators AND/OR/NOT:
category:Pottery AND ( dc-title:lekythos OR dc-title:"white ground" )
will search for the term "Pottery" in the Category field AND EITHER the term "lekythos" OR the phrase "white ground" in the Dublin Core title field.
Range searches allow one to match documents whose numerical field(s) values are between lower and upper bounds:
chronology:[-500 TO 100]
will find all documents whose chronology is between 500 B.C. and 100 A.D. (years B.C. are expressed as negative numbers).
To search for anything within a field use the '*' symbol:
bibliography:*
To search for an empty field use a pair of quotation marks:
bibliography:""
Details
Full details of the query parser syntax for searching can be found here: