University of California, San Francisco.
Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.
Help With Searching
   
   
   
   
The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) allows you to search the full text of each document as well as the metadata for each document; i.e. the author, title, and date.

By default, the system searches the entire record, meaning the full document text as well as the metadata fields.

The text of the document is rendered searchable through a process called Optical Character Recognition (OCR) - this technology is far from perfect and dependant upon the quality of the original document image. Therefore, no search is guaranteed to find every document containing a search term.
Basic Search    

Use Basic Search when searching on one term (nicotine) or element (date, Bates number, author, etc.) in the entire record or within one of the fields offered in the pull-down menu.


  • There are 7 searchable fields available in the drop-down menu regardless of the number or types of collections chosen:
      Title
      Author
      Bates Number
      Document Type
      Entire Record
      Metadata
      Text


  • Search all document information by choosing the default (Entire Record) field.

Advanced Search   Back to Top

Use Advanced Search to create a simple Boolean query using up to 6 terms or phrases in a few set fields.

For more field choices, sorting options and use of wildcard and proximity operators, please use the Expert Search page.


  • The searchable fields available in Advanced Search are limited to 8 shared or composite fields regardless of collection(s) chosen:

      Area

      Characteristics

      Document Type

      Entire Record

      Organizations (will search Org. Authors, Org. Attending, Org. Mentioned, etc.)

      Persons (will search Person Authors, Persons Attending, Persons Mentioned, etc.)

      Special Collections

      Title

Expert Search   Back to Top

The Expert Search interface allows a greater flexibility and complexity in building search queries. With Expert Search, you can create a complex Boolean search string using mixed operators while searching on any field in any collection.
Example: au:bible ((japan OR pacific) NOT exports) (advertisement OR marketing)

For help creating expert search queries see the individual topics below:

   Boolean Operators
    Phrases
   Specific Fields
   Date Ranges
   Wildcard Search
   Proximity Search
   Fuzzy Search
   List of Fields by Collection

Combining Terms using Boolean Operators (And, Or, Not)   Back to Top
 
FTD supports the following Boolean operators:
  AND   OR   NOT  

  • If no Boolean operator is specified, the search engine assumes an AND between two or more terms.


 Parentheses MUST be used within a search query containing mixed Boolean operators (see examples below).

When using NOT, you must use more than one term. A query of "NOT cessation" will return an error message.

Examples:
To find documents in which both terms occur: prevention cessation
  prevention cessation
To find documents in which either term occurs:
  prevention OR cessation
To find documents in which the term prevention appears and cessation does not appear:
  prevention NOT cessation
To find documents in which either prevention or cessation appears but study does not appear:
  (prevention OR cessation) NOT study
Phrase Searching   Back to Top
 
To search for a phrase, enclose the phrase in quotation marks.

 Punctuation (colon, period, semi-colon, etc.) is ignored in the query process, even within the quotation marks.

Examples:
To find documents that contain the phrase: environmental tobacco smoke
  "environmental tobacco smoke"
To find documents that contain two or more phrases, enter all of the phrases:
  "environmental tobacco smoke" "secondhand smoke" "passive smoking"

To find documents that contain at least one of several phrases, separate the phrases with OR
  "environmental tobacco smoke" OR "secondhand smoke" OR "passive smoking"
Searching in Specific Fields   Back to Top

Search for information in specific fields instead of in the "entire record" by specifying metadata fields. See a list of fields by collection.

The simplest fielded query would be one specifying a single field, such as the author field as follows:

    Search syntax:   Field_code:search_term
    Example:           au:proctor

  There is no space between the field code, colon, and search term.

Do not use the field code cn: (collection) if you have already checked boxes in the list of collections to search.

Examples:
To look for two or more different terms in the same field, enclose them in parentheses or list them separately:
  ti:(ets OR "environmental tobacco smoke" OR "passive smoking")
ti:ets OR ti:"environmental tobacco smoke" OR ti:"passive smoking"
Combine searches in the same or in different fields using the implied AND along with OR and NOT:
  au:boyse ti:ets
au:bible OR rc:bible
ti:nicotine NOT dt:article
ti:(ets OR "environmental tobacco smoke") au:(pottorff OR carlson)
Date Ranges   Back to Top

FTD supports date range searches in two ways:

  1. Enter a date range in the document date range boxes provided on the search page.


  2. Specify a date range in one or more of the date fields - document date (dd:), date the document was added to the industry site (ddi:), or date the document was added to UCSF (ddu:). (Searching by the date the document was added to UCSF (ddu:) can help identify documents added to the collections since your previous search.)


Search syntax:

    dd:[yyyymmdd yyyymmdd]
    dd:[yyyymmdd TO yyyymmdd]

    Note: The uppercase "TO" is optional. Use of a lowercase "to" will produce an error.

  A date range must be used in conjunction with another search term/field - you cannot search solely on a date range.

Only one date range is allowed per search.

Do not use the field codes (dd:), (ddu:), or (ddi:) if you have already entered dates into the "Documents Dated" or "Documents Added" boxes on the search form.

Examples:
To find documents containing the word "Winston" dated January 1, 1999 to December 31, 2001:
  Winston dd:[19990000 TO 20019999]

To find documents dated January 1, 1989 to December 31, 2001 that contain the term nonsmokers in the title and lung cancer anywhere in the document:
  ti:nonsmokers "lung cancer" dd:[19890000 TO 20019999]

To find documents containing the phrase "environmental tobacco smoke" that were added to UCSF after January 1, 2004:
  "environmental tobacco smoke" ddu:[20040100 TO 20069999]

Wildcard Search   Back to Top

Wildcards can stand in for one or more unknown letters or numbers.

  • Use the single character wildcard "?" to search for variant spellings.


  • Use the multiple character wildcard "*" to find several variations of a term.


Use of the wildcard operator "*" at the beginning of a term (i.e. *ting) produces an overly broad search and will result in an error message.

Examples:
organi?ation
  Finds documents containing the terms organization and organisation

activis*
  Finds documents containing the terms activist, activists, activism.
Proximity Search   Back to Top

Proximity searches find documents with terms that appear near each other. This can be very useful in full text searching when terms can appear pages apart.

  • Use the tilde "~" at the end of a quoted phrase followed by a number indicating within how many words of each other terms should be: "tobacco smoke"~2

Examples:
To search for the terms "lung" and "cancer" within 10 words of each other:
  "lung cancer"~10
Fuzzy Search   Back to Top

Fuzzy searches find terms that are "close" in spelling to the search term. Fuzzy searching can be useful when you are searching text that may contain typographical errors, misspellings, or for text that has been scanned using optical character recognition (OCR).

  • Use the tilde, "~", at the end of a single word term: tobacco~

Examples:
To search for terms close to the word "coumadin":
  coumadin~
- finds documents containing the terms coughlin, contain, coumarin, formalin, etc.

To search for terms close to the word "glantz":
  glantz~
- finds documents containing the terms glantz, glants, grant and plant.
 
Finding Documents in Foreign Languages   Back to Top

To find documents that were written in a language other than English, use the Expert Search page to search for languages in the Characteristics field (cond:).



  • The following languages can be found in the Characteristics field of most collections:
      French
      German
      Japanese
      Portuguese
      Spanish


  • To search for documents in languages not listed above, search the Characteristics field for either "other language" or "foreign language" in combination with the name of the country in the metadata:

    cond:"other language" md:[name of country]

Examples:
To search for documents written in German:
  cond:German

To search for documents written in other languages not specified:
  cond:"other language" md:Russia
cond:"foreign language" md:China


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