Searching UKAT

This help page explains how you can search for terms in the UK Archival Thesaurus. It tells you:

• What you can (and can't) search.
• How to carry out a Basic search.
• How to carry out an Advanced search.
• How to Interpret the results of your search.

What you can (and can't) search

UKAT's search interfaces can be used to search for all terms which have been submitted to UKAT or incorporated into UKAT. You can search for terms which appear in the main body of the Thesaurus, including terms which have been formally incorporated into UKAT (terms whose status is 'approved'), and terms which have been edited and are awaiting incorporation pending a period of consultation (terms whose status is 'pending'). You can also search for candidate terms, which have been submitted but have not yet been edited, as well as terms which have gone through the editing process and have been rejected. It's possible to restrict your search to terms which match a particular editing status: see Filtering by term status for details. If no status is specified, the default search is for all terms regardless of status.

While the search interfaces allow you to search the Thesaurus, they do not cover information on other UKAT web pages, such as the pages which provide information about the project.

How to carry out a basic search

The simplest way to search the UKAT database is to enter the term or terms which you want into the input box on UKAT's Home page, or the input box in the UKAT main menu (the blue bar which appears at the top of each page except the home page).

Wildcards will be applied automatically to the beginning and end of each word which you input. This means that your search will locate any term containing the string of characters which you've entered. So a search on 'school' will return (among other things) 'Agricultural schools', 'School visits' and 'Preschool education', as well as 'Schools'.

If you enter more than one word, wildcards be applied to each word, and in addition the words will be treated as having been joined by the Boolean operator OR (see Boolean searching). This means that if you enter two words, your search will return any term which contains either the first string, or the second string, or both. For example, the results of a search on 'school education' would include the terms 'Coeducational schools', 'Preschool education', 'Adult education' and 'Bible schools'.

A basic search is the equivalent of carrying out a search using the Advanced search form, with no filters and with the 'Matching' option set to 'Contains' (see below).

How to carry out an advanced search

The Advanced search form allows you to construct complex queries of the UKAT database. This section explains:

• How to refine your search by using the 'Matching' option.
• How to refine your search using filters.
• How to use filters to list categories of terms.

How to refine your search by using the 'Matching' option

After entering your text into the input box labelled 'Search for term' at the top of the Advanced search form, you can refine your search by selecting 'Contains', 'Exact match' or 'Boolean' from the drop down menu labelled 'Matching'. 'Contains' is selected by default if no other option is chosen.

Contains

Select this option if you want to find any term which contains the text which you've entered. Wildcards will be applied automatically to the beginning and end of each word which you input. This means that your search will locate any term containing the string of characters which you've entered. So a search on 'children' will return (among other things) 'Abandoned children', 'Schoolchildren' and 'Childrens books', as well as 'Children'.

If you enter more than one word, wildcards be applied to each word, and in addition the words will be treated as having been joined by the Boolean operator OR (see Boolean searching). This means that if you enter two words, your search will return any term which contains either the first string, or the second string, or both. For example, the results of a search on 'school teacher' would include the terms 'One teacher schools', 'Agricultural schools' and 'Teacher trade unions'.

Exact match

Select this option if you want to find a term which exactly matches the text which you've input. For example, a search on 'education' will only return the term 'Education': it will not locate terms such as 'Adult education' or 'Educational administration'. No wildcards are applied if 'exact match' is selected.

Boolean searching

Select this option if your search involves more than one word, and you want to refine your search by using Boolean operators. Once this option is selected, you will be able to enter a query in the 'Search for term' input box by linking strings using UKAT's implementation of the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT. This implementation is summarised in the following table. Note that wildcard characters will also be applied to the beginning and end of each string which you enter. For example, if you input 'able +dis', this will be matched to terms like 'Disabled children' and 'Incurable diseases'.

UKAT operator	Formulating your query	Operator's function	Boolean equivalent
+	Add '+' to the start of each word to which the operator applies: e.g. 'school +teacher'	The search results must contain the word to which the operator is applied: e.g. 'school +teacher' will return any term which contains both 'school' and 'teacher'	AND
-	Add '-' to the start of each word to which the operator applies: e.g. 'school -primary'	The search results must not contain the word to which the operator is applied: e.g. 'school -primary' will return any term which contains 'school' but not 'primary'	NOT
OR	Add upper-case OR (preceded and followed by a space) between two words: e.g. 'school OR teacher'. This operator is only accepted in upper-case to avoid clashes with term names	Locates any term which contains either the preceding word or the following word or both.	OR

If a word in a Boolean search is not preceded by an operator, the default is an AND search. So 'school +teacher' is the equivalent of '+school +teacher'.

How to refine your search using filters

The Advanced search form includes a number of filters. These can be used, in conjunction with the 'Matching' option (see above), to refine your search by specifying that the results should include or exclude terms which fall into certain categories. These categories are:

• Field of knowledge/microthesaurus
• Term source
• Scope notes
• Term status

In the Advanced search form, each filter is preceded by a drop down menu with the options 'and' and 'and not'. These are equivalent to the Boolean operators AND and NOT (see Boolean searching), and specify how the filter should be applied:

• And: excludes terms which do not match the filter. E.g. if you select 'And' and filter by field of knowledge and microthesaurus, the search results will be limited to terms which are within the selected microthesaurus.
• And not: excludes terms which match the filter. E.g. if you select 'And not' and filter by source, any terms matching the selected source will be excluded from the search results.

To avoid excessively long searches which would time out, we have not implemented the Boolean OR operator for filters.

Filtering by field of knowledge and microthesaurus

Fields of knowledge and microthesauri are the uppermost levels of UKAT's hierarchy (see Thesaurus basics for further details). Use this filter to include or exclude those terms which fall within a particular field of knowledge and, optionally, a microthesaurus. If you want to filter by microthesaurus, you must first select the field of knowledge which contains the microthesaurus.

Filtering by term source

Use this filter to refine your search by specifying a term source: i.e. one of the organisations or individuals which has contributed terms to UKAT. The drop down list allows you to select major contributors (e.g. UNESCO). Alternatively, you can input the contributor's source value. See the Contributors page for details of the values that can be input.

Filtering by scope notes

Use this filter to refine your search by specifying text that should occur in any scope notes associated with a term. The filter includes a drop down menu with the options 'Exact match' and 'Contains'. These perform similar functions to 'Contains' and 'Exact match' in the drop down menu labelled 'Matching' (see How to refine your search by using the 'Matching' option). Selecting 'Exact match' will locate those terms whose scope notes exactly match the text which you input (in other words, your text must match the scope notes word for word). 'Contains' will return terms whose scope notes contain the text which you input.

Filtering by term status

Use this filter to specify the status of a term: either approved, pending, candidate or rejected. 'Approved' terms have been edited and have been formally incorporated into UKAT. 'Pending' terms have been edited, but are awaiting formal incorporation following a period of consultation. 'Candidate' terms have been submitted to UKAT but have not yet been edited, while 'rejected' terms have been considered by the editor and rejected. If no status is specified in this filter, the default search is for all terms regardless of status.

How to use filters to list categories of terms

As well as being a powerful tool for refining searches for individual terms, the filters described above also provide a simple way of generating lists of all the terms in UKAT which match a filtered category. To use filters in this way, leave the 'Search for term' input box blank, and select the appropriate filter before executing your search. For example, you can:

• List all terms in a field of knowledge, or a microthesaurus.
• List all terms submitted by a particular contributor.
• List all terms with a particular status.
• List all terms whose scope notes match or contain the text which you've input.

Combinations of the above are also possible: e.g. all the terms submitted by a contributor within a particular field of knowledge.

Interpreting the results of your search

If your search was successful, the results will be output as a list of one or more terms. Terms whose status is candidate (i.e. submitted to UKAT but not yet edited) will be preceded by the icon , while appears before rejected terms. All other terms in the list will be terms that have been edited and have entered the main thesaurus, i.e. approved or pending terms. Each term in the list will link to its main display, which gives full details of the term (see the Main term display help page for further information).

You can choose the number of terms which will appear on each page of your search results by using the drop down menu labelled 'Number of results' at the bottom of the Advanced search form. From each page of search results, you can refine your search by selecting 'Refine your search options', which will return you to the Advanced search form.

If your query involved more than one word, the term(s) which most closely matched your input will be listed first. For example, if you searched for 'primary schools' with 'Matching' = 'Contains', terms which contain both 'primary' and 'schools' will be listed first, followed by those which contain either 'primary' or 'schools'. Once any ranking has been applied, search results are output in alphabetical order.