The
Basic Search
To
enter a query, type in a few descriptive words
and press the Enter key or click the
Search button for a list of relevant
results.
World
Public Library uses sophisticated text-matching
techniques to find pages that are both important
and relevant to your search. For instance,
World Public Library analyzes not only the
candidate page, but also the pages linking
into it to determine the value of the candidate
page for your search. World Public Library
also prefers pages in which your query terms
are near each other.
Note:
Encrypted, viewable PDF documents are converted
to HTML for indexing; however, the HTML is
not displayed.
Spelling
A
single spelling suggestion is returned with
the results for queries where the spell checker
has detected a possible spelling mistake.
The
spell checker feature is context sensitive.
For example, if the query submitted is "gail
divers," "gail devers" is suggested as an
alternative query. However, "scuba divers"
would not return an alternate query suggestion.
Note:
Currently, the spell checker supports only
US English.
Synonyms
Synonyms
are other words that have the same or similar
meanings. They are displayed as "Other suggested
searches" on the results page.
.
Sorting
by Date
The
Sort by Date feature sorts and presents
your search results based on date. The date
of each file is returned in the results. Results
that do not contain dates are displayed at the
end, sorted by relevance.
Automatic
"and" Queries
By
default, World Public Library only returns pages
that include all of your search terms. There
is no need to include "and" between terms. For
example, to search for engineering product specification
documents, enter:
To
broaden or restrict the search, include fewer
or more terms.
"OR"
Searches
World
Public Library supports the logical "OR" operator.
To retrieve pages that include either word A
or word B, use an uppercase "OR" between terms.
For example, to search for an office in either
London or Paris, enter:
See
Your Search Terms in the Results
Every
World Public Library search result lists one
or more excerpts from the web page to display
how your search terms are used in context on
that page. In the excerpt, your search terms
are displayed in bold text so that you can quickly
determine if that result is from a page you
want to visit.
Does
Capitalization Matter?
World
Public Library searches are not case sensitive.
All letters, regardless of how you enter them,
are understood as lower case. For example, searches
for "george washington," "George Washington,"
and "George washington" all return the same
results.
Does
World Public Library Observe Stop Words?
World
Public Library ignores common words and characters
known as stop words. These include most pronouns
and articles. World Public Library automatically
disregards such terms as "where" and "how,"
as well as certain single digits and single
letters. These terms rarely help to narrow a
search and can significantly slow searching.
If you want to use stop words in your search,
use the "+" sign or enclose your phrase containing
stop words in quotation marks. Make sure that
you include a space before the "+" sign.
For
example, to search for Annual Report Version
I:
You
can also include the "+" sign in phrase searches.
Does
World Public Library Use Stemming?
To
provide the most accurate results, World eBook
Library does not use "stemming" or support "wildcard"
searches. Rather, World Public Library searches
for exactly the words that you enter into the
search box.
For
example, searching for "airlin" or "airlin*"
will not yield "airline" or "airlines.". If
in doubt, try both forms, for example: "airline"
and "airlines."
Refining
Your Search
Since
World Public Library only returns web pages that
contain all of the words in your query,
refining or narrowing your search is as simple
as adding more words to the search terms you
have already entered. The refined query returns
a specific subset of the pages that were returned
by your original broad query.
Excluding
Words
You
can exclude a word from your search by putting
a minus sign ("-") immediately in front of the
term you want to exclude. Make sure you include
a space before the minus sign.
For
example, the search:
will
return pages about bass that do not contain
the word "music."
Phrase
Searches
You
can search for phrases by adding quotation marks.
Words enclosed in double quotes ("like this")
appear together in all returned documents. Phrase
searches using quotation marks are useful when
searching for famous sayings or specific names.
Certain
characters serve as phrase connectors. Phrase
connectors work like quotes because they join
your search words in the same way double quotes
join your search words. For example, the search:
is
treated as a phrase search even though the
search words are not enclosed in double quotes.
World Public Library recognizes hyphens, slashes,
periods, equal signs, and apostrophes as phrase
connectors.
Restricted
Searches
You
may also narrow searches by restricting queries
in certain ways.
| Restrict
Type |
Query
Syntax |
Example |
| to
a given location on your site |
allinurl;
allintitle; inurl; intitle |
allinurl:World
Public Library help
see Advanced Operators for details |
| to
specific domains |
site: |
site:World
Public Library.com
see Advanced Operators for details |
| to
specific file types like Excel spreadsheets,
PDFf docs, etc. |
filetype: |
filetype:pdf |
Directory
Restricting
To
restrict the directories searched, enter a URL
that drills down through the directory structure
to the directories or files to be searched.
For example, the query [World Public Library.com/manual/]
restricts the search to everything at the manual
level. If the trailing slash is not included,
as in [World Public Library.com/manual] ,
then all subdirectories are also searched.
Advanced
Operators
World
Public Library Search supports several advanced
operators, which are query words with special
functions. A list of the advanced operators
with explanation are provided below.
cache:
The search engine keeps the text of the many
documents it crawls available in a backed-up
format known as "cache." A cached version of
a web page can be retrieved if the original
page is unavailable (for example, the page's
server is down). The cached page appears exactly
as it looked when the crawler last crawled it
and includes a message (at the top of the page)
to indicate that it's a cached version of the
page.
The
query [cache:] shows the cached version
of the web page. For instance, [cache:www.World
Public Library.com] shows the cached page
of World Public Library's homepage.
Note:
There can be no space between cache:
and the web page URL in the query.
If
you include other words in the query, those
words will be highlighted within the cached
document. For instance, [cache:www.World
Public Library.com press releases] shows
the cached content with the words "press" and
"releases" highlighted.
info:
The query [info:] returns all information
available for that particular URL. For instance,
[info:www.World Public Library.com]
shows information about the World Public Library
homepage. Note there can be no space between
the info: and the web page URL.
site:
If you include [site:] in your query,
the results are restricted to those websites
in the given domain. For instance, [help
site:www.World Public Library.com] finds
pages about help within www.World eBook
Library.com . [help site:com] finds
pages about help within .com URLs .
Note:
There can be no space between the "site:"
and the domain.
link:
The query [link:] enables you to restrict
your search to all pages that link to the query
page. To do this, use the [link:sampledomain.com]
syntax in the search box.
For
example, to find all links to Stanford's main
page, enter:
allintitle:
If you start a query with [allintitle:] ,
the results are restricted to documents with
all of the query words in the document's HTML
title. For example, [allintitle: World eBook
Library search] only returns documents
that have both "World Public Library" and "search"
in the HTML title.
intitle:
If you include [intitle:] in your query,
the search is restricted to results with documents
containing that word in the HTML title. For
example, [intitle:World Public Library search]
returns documents that mention the word "World
Public Library" in their HTML title, and mention
the word "search" anywhere in the document either
in the title or anywhere else in the document.
Note:
There can be no space between the "intitle:"
and the following word.
Putting
[intitle:] in front of every word in
your query is equivalent to putting [allintitle:]
at the front of your query. For example, [intitle:World
Public Library intitle:search] is the same
as [allintitle: World Public Library search] .
allinurl:
If you start a query with [allinurl:] ,
the search is restricted to results with all
of the query words in the URL. For example,
[allinurl: World Public Library search]
returns only documents that have both "World
Public Library" and "search" in the URL.
Note:
[allinurl:] works on words, not URL
components. In particular, it ignores punctuation.
Thus, [allinurl: foo/bar] restricts
the results to page with the words "foo" and
"bar" in the URL, but doesn't require that they
be separated by a slash within that URL, that
they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular
word order. There is currently no way to enforce
these constraints.
inurl:
If you include [inurl:] in your query,
the results are restricted to documents containing
that word in the URL. For example, [inurl:World
Public Library search] returns documents
that mention the word "World Public Library"
in their URL and mention the word "search" anywhere
in the document either in the URL or anywhere
else in the document.
Note:
There can be no space between the "inurl:" and
the following word.
Note:
[inurl:] works on words, not URL components.
In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus,
in the query [World Public Library inurl:foo/bar] ,
the inurl: operator affects only the
word "foo," which is the single word following
the inurl: operator, and does not affect
the word "bar." The query [World Public Library
inurl:foo inurl:bar] can be used to require
both "foo" and "bar" to be in the URL.
Putting
[inurl:] in front of every word in
your query is equivalent to putting [allinurl:]
at the front of your query. For example, [inurl:World
Public Library inurl:search] is the same
as [allinurl: World Public Library search] .
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