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Annotation of researchv10dc/cmd/library/option4.help, revision 1.1.1.1

1.1       root        1: Searches via library() are done using electronic mail. That is, your search
                      2: request is sent to a remote computer which does the search and mails back the
                      3: results.  Usually you should have results within 20 minutes or less.
                      4: 
                      5: There are two search stategies available through library().  Note that these
                      6: are search languages of the slimmer system - see slimmer documentation for more
                      7: details than given below.
                      8: 
                      9: The main method is to enter a search string which library handles as follows:
                     10:     a) It is broken up into alpha-numeric components (words) and all
                     11:        punctuation is thrown away.
                     12:     b) The words are used from left-to-right to find items having the
                     13:        word (note anywhere - e.g. smith will find authors, titles, etc).
                     14:     c) The set of items retrieved by each word is ANDed with those
                     15:        retrieved so far, with the constraint that something always remains
                     16:        in the retrieved set.
                     17: 
                     18:  Some points of interest:
                     19:     1) If you surround something with quotes, rule a above is bypassed.
                     20:        I.e. to search on the word  CP/M   enter "cp/m" otherwise the
                     21:        slash will cause it to search on   'CP AND M'
                     22:     2) Authors are in the indices in the form  LAST FM, i.e.
                     23:                WALDSTEIN RK
                     24:        Searching on WALDSTEIN will retrieve everything by any author with
                     25:        last name WALDSTEIN. To search a particular author use "WALDSTEIN RK".
                     26: 
                     27: A more complex full Boolean search capacity is also available. It is
                     28: used if the search string begins with a parenthesis "(".
                     29: 
                     30: The operators are (in order of precedence):
                     31:   /=<field list>      restrict a set to a list of fields
                     32:   A (f) B             results in items with A and B in the same field
                     33:   A NOT B             results in items containing term A, NOT term B
                     34:   A AND B             results is items containing both term A and term B
                     35:   A OR  B             results in items with term A OR term B
                     36: 
                     37: So a legitimate, though overly complex search, is
                     38: 
                     39:   ((science (f) (fantas? or fiction))/=ti and (84 or 85)/=da) not asimov
                     40: 
                     41: 
                     42: 

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