Searching
Browsing

Searching

What do we mean by Search?

The ADAM search engine will search our database to find records containing the exact words you entered into the query box. By default (the Simple search), it will automatically search the title, description, identifier, and subject fields. The subject field is sometimes refered to as 'keywords'. You can expand or narrow your search in a number of ways:-

1. By using an Option search to search within specific fields.

2. By using an Advanced search to search for combinations of search terms or parts of terms.

3. By using a Proximity search to specify how close your search terms must be to each other.

4. By using a What's New search to view the records in order of date added to the database, with the most recently added displayed first.

5. By checking the 'Search full text of resources' box - Whereas all resources found in the ADAM database have been selected by subject experts, those in the ADAM full text index have been collected by software called a harvester (similar mechanisms may be referred to as robots or Web crawlers). A harvester accesses Web sites automatically, downloading references to links and other information from the sites it visits. This method of collecting resource information means we can create large numbers of records and can search through the metadata and full text for very large web sites. However, it means that the quality of the resources is less certain and that we are unable to write separate descriptions for all the listed pages.

Relevance Ranking

ADAM search results are sorted by relevance. The results nearest the top will usually be the most relevant. The percentage sign to the left of each result is the relevance rating. The closer the rating is to 100%, the more confident ADAM is that the resource will fit your needs.

Browsing

Everything contained within a search engine is a mystery until you start picking away at it, using different keywords, refining your searches, and trying again and again. Even then, you do not have a complete picture of what the engine contains. What you do have is a series of search results pages that emerge from the various keywords you've chosen.
So yes, you can search the ADAM database , but, you can also browse through all the information hierarchically: using the subject headings created by the ADAM team.