Image Search

Search Text: Enter the word, words, or phrase you want to find in the Search Text box. The results returned will be in order of decreasing relevance, based on the search text you enter. Unless you check the Boolean Search box, your entry will be used as a natural language search selection.
Our system supports Search Text entries of up to 255 characters.
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Search Type: Click the appropriate radiobutton in the Search Type group to select where you would like to search.
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Boolean Search: A search is normally done as a "natural language" search where what you type in the Search Text field is broken into words, and the records returned are the ones containing one or more of the words you entered, ranked according to how closely the record matches what you asked for (the Score value). For more precise control over the search, you can elect to perform a Boolean Search with somewhat different rules.
The most common type of Boolean Search is where you want to find an exact string. In that case, check the Boolean Search box, and enclose the string you want to find in double-quotes ('"') in the Search Text field and press the Search button.

The Boolean Search capability supports the following operators:

	+		A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in each record that is returned.
	-		A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any of the records that are returned. Note: The - operator acts only to exclude records that are otherwise matched by other search terms. Thus, a boolean-mode search that contains only terms preceded by - returns an empty result. It does not return "all records except those containing any of the excluded terms."
	(no operator)		By default (when neither + nor - is specified) the word is optional, but the records that contain it are rated higher.
	> <		These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a record. The > operator increases the contribution and the < operator decreases it. See the example following this list.
	( )		Parentheses group words into subexpressions. Parenthesized groups can be nested.
	~		A leading tilde acts as a negation operator, causing the word's contribution to the record's relevance to be negative. This is useful for marking "noise" words. A record containing such a word is rated lower than others, but is not excluded altogether, as it would be with the - operator.
	*		The asterisk serves as the truncation (or wildcard) operator. Unlike the other operators, it must be appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the word preceding the * operator.
	"		A phrase that is enclosed within double quote ('"') characters matches only records that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed. The match must include non-word characters in the phrase. For example, "test phrase" does not match "test, phrase". If the phrase contains no words that are in the index, the result is empty.

The following examples demonstrate some search strings that use Boolean Search operators:

	apple banana		Find records that contain at least one of the two words.
	+apple +juice		Find records that contain both words.
	+apple macintosh		Find records that contain the word "apple", but rank records higher if they also contain "macintosh".
	+apple -macintosh		Find records that contain the word "apple" but not "macintosh".
	+apple ~macintosh		Find records that contain the word "apple", but if the record also contains the word "macintosh", rate it lower than if record does not. This is "softer" than a search for '+apple -macintosh' where the presence of "macintosh" causes the record not to be returned at all.
	+apple +(>turnover <strudel)		Find records that contain the words "apple" and "turnover", or "apple" and "strudel" (in any order), but rank "apple turnover" higher than "apple strudel".
	apple*		Find records that contain words such as "apple", "apples", "applesauce", or "applet".
	"some words"		Find records that contain the exact phrase "some words" (for example, records that contain "some words of wisdom" but not "some noise words"). The '"' characters that enclose the phrase are operator characters that delimit the phrase, and must be typed as part of the search string.

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