This page contains technical information which will help you make use of the search facility.

The different types of search that you can perform are listed below.

Brief guide to searching
There are two main ways to search the database: a Quick Search and an Advanced Search.

Quick Search
The Quick Search is accessed via the search box in the top right hand corner of the page.

By default, the Quick Search looks in only two fields in the catalogue: Title and Description. If you enter more than one search term, the Quick Search looks for what is called an AND search. This means it looks for records where all the terms are found together.

Please note that due to technical limitations, it is not possible to include a date range as part of a Quick Search. To add dates, use an Advanced Search instead.

See the "What are acceptable searches?" page for sample searches.

Advanced Search
The Advanced Search will look across all fields that contain text content. It also lets you search specifically within other, non-text fields such as date.

Refining an Advanced Search
By default, the Advanced Search works as an OR search, looking for any of the terms that you have entered. However you can choose to change this default by clicking the "Refine Search Criteria" option. There are three ways to refine the search option:

Look for all the terms - this will perform an AND search

Look for at least one of the terms

Look for records without the terms - this is looking for anything but the terms entered

Searching on picklist fields
Picklists are fields where the content is restricted to pre-entered terms. If you have selected a picklist field for searching, then the field will appear with a drop down list from which you can select your search term.