These instructions are applicable to both the homepage search boxes and the keyword search field on the advanced search page.
You may enter one or more words into the keyword search field in order to find the assets you are looking for.
If you enter more than one word into the keyword search field then the search will find items that contain at least one of the words you entered.
The search is not case sensitive, with the exception of the boolean operators described below.
You can search for a phrase of two or more words by enclosing the words in quotation marks. E.g. searching for
"the pink panther"
will find only items containing this complete phrase.
Please note that if the default stemming algorithm is
active (matching 'swim' with 'swims' or 'swimming'), then this affects the
results that are returned. E.g. a phrase search for
"Paul swims" would also match with "Paul swimming"
Placing the operator AND (in upper-case) between two words or phrases will find only those items that contain both words or phrases. E.g. searching for return AND "pink panther"
will find only those items containing both the word "return" and the phrase "pink panther".
Placing the operator OR (in upper-case) between two words or phrases will find items that contain either of the words or phrases. E.g. searching for return OR "pink panther"
will find items containing either the word "return" or the phrase "pink panther".
The OR operator is optional; leaving a space between 2 words or phrases has the same effect.
Placing the operator NOT between two words or phrases will find only those items that contain the first word or phrase but do not contin the second. E.g. searching for pink NOT red
will match items that contain the word "pink" but do not also contain the word "red". Note that there must be a word or phrase on either side of the NOT operator.
Parentheses can be used to group search clauses into sub-queries. This can be very useful for controlling the boolean logic of a search. For example, the search red AND pink OR blue
is logically ambiguous, whereas the meaning of red AND (pink OR blue)
or (red AND pink) OR blue
is clear.
Wildcards can be used to match against any character or characters that appear somewhere in a word. Note, however, that neither of the wildcards described below can appear at the beginning of a word - at least the first character of the word must be specified.
A question mark (?) can be used in a word to match against any single character. For instance,p?nk
will find "pink" and "punk".
An asterisk (*) can be used to match any 0 or more characters in a word. For instance,pin*
will match "pin", "pink", "pints", etc. and p*t
will match all word beginning in "p" and ending in "t".