Searching
Quick Search
The Quick Search option, available at the top left of nearly
every page in the Latino American Experience allows you to type in
keywords and view the results. Keep in mind that multiple search terms will be
joined together with Boolean ANDs, and that surrounding your search terms with
quotation marks will only return results for that exact phrase. For example, a
Quick Search for "Cesar Chavez" (with quotes around it) will return all content
containing both "Cesar" and "Cesar" AND "Chavez" in that exact order somewhere
in the title, body, or indexing metadata.
A number of very common "stop words" will be ignored by the
Quick Search, including: a, an, any, by, for, from, if, in, it, its, not, of,
on, or, same, than, the, there, to, which.
Since this option is potentially a simple and broad search,
we recommend that users with specific topics or results in mind use the
Advanced Search, which allows you to control results with a powerful set of
filters and other tools.
Advanced Search
Keyword Search
The Keyword Search option in Advanced Search works much like
a standard search screen in many major search engines, with some minor
differences. For Keyword Searches, all Boolean operators except wildcards will
be removed in order to build the most reliable query. Instead of Boolean
operators, use each text box as specified:
All of these words…: accepts a space-separated list
of keywords. All words must be found in an entry for it to be located and
returned as a Result.
and this exact phrase…: accepts a single phrase. The
phrase must be found in an entry exactly as you type it for it to be returned.
This is joined to the "All of these words…" box, if it contains text, with a
Boolean AND.
and any of these
words…: accepts a space-separated list of keywords, If any of the words are
found in an entry, it will be returned. This is joined to the "All of these
words…" and the "and this exact phrase…" boxes, if they contain text, with a
Boolean AND.
and none of these words…: accepts a space-separated
list of keywords. If any of the words are found in the entry, it will NOT be
returned. This is joined to the "All of these words…," the "and this exact
phrase…," and the "and any of these words…" boxes, if they contain text, with a
Boolean AND.
Generally speaking, the more boxes you use the more specific
your query will be and the fewer results you’ll see.
Boolean Search
The Boolean Search option offers even more powerful search
capabilities than the Keyword Search. Those who choose to use this option must
write their query using specific Boolean terms. For convenience, a drop-down
menu with all the available options is provided. Selecting terms will
automatically insert them into the query.
Search Filters
Also available in the Advanced Search are four checkboxes
that allow you to filter your searches by the type of content you are
interested in: articles, primary documents, images, and external resources
(mostly vetted web sites). You may select more than one checkbox. Searches
default to returning all types of content.
Search Operators
The Search Operators LAE’s search engine understands are:
- and(AND or +)
- or (OR or |)
- not (NOT or -)
- adjacency (ADJ# - replace the # with a number)
- near (NEAR# - replace the # with a number)
- frequency (># - replace the # with a number)
- operator priority (parentheses)
- single character wildcard (?)
- multiple character wildcard (*)
Adjacency and Near Operators
When used, the adjacency operator specifies the order
in which terms must appear and how far apart those terms can be. For example, a
result for the search term "Cuban ADJ3 (revolution OR liberation)" must contain
"Cuban … revolution" or "Cuban … liberation" no more than three words apart and
in that order to be returned. An entry with only "revolution…Cuban"
would not be returned. The near operator disregards the order of terms
and looks instead only for distance between them.
Search Results
Sort Options
Results can be filtered by the five types of content in the
database by clicking the appropriate tab:
All (default): All types of content
Articles: These can be chapters from a book, entries
from a reference work, or an article written commissioned for the Latino
American Experience.
Primary Documents: These include excerpted text from
treaties, laws, legal cases, speeches, memoirs, folktales, memoirs, and other
primary source materials or the complete work, sometimes as a stand-alone
document but often within the context of a larger article.
Images: Photos, illustrations, charts, and maps.
Timeline: Entries from the Timeline feature, a series
of thousands of short descriptions of events from pre-Columbian Indigenous
history to the present.
Other Resources: Includes relevant web links, audio
files, primary documents, and other material.
Origins Search Results
If you type in a keyword in Quick Search or Advanced Search
that has a country or region name in it, such as "Puerto Rico" or "Puerto Rican
statehood," your search results list will likely start with an invitation to
explore material about that country or region, in this case Puerto Rico,
contained in the Origins section of LAE. Clicking on the links in this Search
result will take you to the At a Glance page of the Origins section. For more
information about the Origins section, see below.
Search within Results
If the results of your Search are not exactly what you
wanted, or if a search for a common term results in too many hits, you can
refine your results by searching within them. On the Search Results page go to
the "Quick Search" box, type in an additional search term, check the "Search
within Results box, and "Go." For example, a Quick Search for "Puerto Rico" may
return hundreds of results, but if you enter "statehood" in the Search box and
click on Search within Results, you will get a much smaller and more specific
hit list.
Search Relevancy
Results for Quick Search and Advanced Search are weighted.
The appearance of the search term (or terms) in the title of the article is
weighted most highly, followed by its appearance in the title of the book from
which the article is taken, its appearance in the indexing terms used to
classify the content, and the number of times the term (or terms) appears in
the article itself. In other words, if the term appears in the title of the
article it will generally appear higher on the list of results than an article
that contains the same term only in the body of the article.
Search Tips
Case Sensitivity, Special Characters, and Stemming
Searching is not case sensitive. A search for "la raza," "La
Raza," and "LA RAZA" will return the same results in the same order. Modified
characters, such as "ñ," "é," or "ì," can be typed into the Search box simply
as "n," "e," or "i." Words can be stemmed using the single character wildcard,
?, or the multiple character wildcard, *, as described above.
Multiple Search Windows
If a user opens more
than one browser window and searches are conducted in them, the most recent
Search overwrites all others. For this reason, we recommend that users launch
only one browser window at a time.
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