Submitted by Sammy Smith ([email protected])
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We hope you’ve noticed the little search box below the tag cloud on the green navigation bar along the right side of your screen.
Our website’s search capabilities are powerful, and can help you find specific information on our website that is may not otherwise be easy to track down. Searching our website is similar to a Google internet search, using some of the same options to create a customized search.
We offer the search box to provide you with a way to find specific information on our website. Additionally, the search box is visible on every webpage you visit on our website, so you can opt to do a search from any webpage.
For a normal simple search you could search for these words:
swift creek lithics
This is the same as searching for:
swift AND creek AND lithics
in mathematical logic terms. In other words, you are searching for all three words in no particular order or arrangement. This three-word search will only return stories that have all three words in a story somewhere.
You also can search for specific phrases by putting quote marks around the phrase like this:
“swift creek pottery”
This will only return stories that have these three words as a phrase. It will not return any story that has, for example, the phrase “swift creek” without the word “pottery” immediately following it. The quote marks only return stories that have the whole phrase.
Similarly, you can use a minus sign (hyphen or “-”) in front of a word or quote-bracketed phrase to search for stories that do not have that word or phrase in it. This customized search sometimes is called an exclusion search. The minus option is most powerful when paired with a search for something else (either word or phrase). For example, a search string:
pottery -“swift creek"
returns all stories with the word pottery, AND lacking the phrase “swift creek” (although that seems an odd search!).
By the way, at least during our testing at this time, our website’s search capabilities are not case sensitive.
Please give our website’s search box a try!
Posted online on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010