Help for Searches
To give you the most useful results, our search engine allows you to search for either strict (keyword-based) matches or loose (concept-based) matches.

A search for strict matches will search for documents containing words that match the words that you've entered in the text window.

A search for loose matches will search for documents containing concepts related to the words that you've entered.

For example, if you're looking for a document that contains the word "cybercash," perform a strict search on the word "cybercash" by selecting strict matches and typing "cybercash" into the text window.

If you're interested in the basic concept of cybercash - including the electronic transfer of funds, e-money algorhythms, and so on - select loose matches, type "cybercash" into the text window, and our search engine will retrieve documents that mention not only "cybercash," but also "digicash," "e-cash," and so on.

A search for loose matches will retrieve more documents, though the documents with low percentages may be less relevant to your search.

A search for strict matches will ensure that you do not retrieve many documents that are irrelevant to your search. However, you may miss documents that are broadly related to the concepts you're interested in.

(It never hurts to try both!)

Your search query can be as detailed as you like. Don't worry about entering too many words; the more words, the better. Additional words will help our search engine figure out what concepts you're really interested in. On the other hand, our search engine will do a pretty good job of figuring out what documents are interesting to you, even if your query is vague.

Let's say you're searching for documents about the poetry of Allen Ginsberg. A good starting point would be:

        poetry Allen Ginsberg
If you have a question about a particular piece of Ginsberg's writing, say, his collaboration with painter Francesco Clemente, Pastel Sentences, you might enter:

        poetry Allen Ginsberg Clemente Pastel
Even if there are no documents that are actually about Pastel Sentences, our search engine will still show you documents about Howl, Kaddish, and other references to the poet's work.

Try to keep irrelevant words to a minimum.
If you're looking for documents about the Pastel Sentences, please don't enter a query like "Find me all documents about Pastel Sentences." Our search engine looks for all the words in your query, so queries like the previous example will find all documents about "finding all documents about Pastel Sentences," which may not be what you want.

It's all right to specify multiple forms of the same phrase.
Our search engine distinguishes between hyphenated and un-hyphenated words. Sometimes it might be necessary to say that you want both versions, for example "CDROM CD-ROM." The search engine will try to figure out that CDROM and CD-ROM are the same, but it never hurts to ask for all the versions of the phrase you're looking for.

Common words are ignored.
Our search engine doesn't index common words such as a, and, and the. These words in your query will be ignored. The search engine also ignores numbers; however, it can find strings that happen to contain a number, for example, "LSD-25."