Instructions for Searching the NIS E-mail Directory

After selecting the search item, you will be presented with a prompt for
entering the words you wish to use in conducting your search.  Several key
points for searching:

(1)  you can use any words you wish to choose -- these words must be
     contained somewhere within a database item to cause a match to occur.

(2)  searches are conducting using a WAIS server (WAIS stands for Wide
     Area Information Server).  WAIS returns matches to with the
     records it suspects are MOST likely to satisfy the user's search
     listed first and less likely matches listed below.  It will return
     up to 75 matches per search.

(3)  the version of the WAIS searching software used here DOES
     support the use of boolean operators and partial word searching.
     The following describes the use of these new searching facilities.

     "AND" - The AND operator is helpful in limiting a search when a
             particular word is known.  For instance, if you are looking for
             someone in Tashkent named Konstantin
             a question like "tashkent AND konstantin" might be a
             way to start.
                
             The word "AND" (in upper case) is different from "and" in a WAIS
             question.  The word "and" is ignored, while the operator 
             "AND" is recognized and can return very different results.
                
     "OR" -  The OR operator is often used in conjunction with AND to
             specify a few different forms of a concept.  For instance:
                
                  (konstantin OR natasha) AND tashkent
                
             would yield documents that contained tashkent AND either konstantin
             OR natasha.  The operator is often used to join two different
             phrases of a boolean search.  For example:
                
                  (tashkent AND natasha) OR (konstantin AND moscow).
                
             The word "OR" (in upper case) is different from "or" in a WAIS
             question.  The word "or" is ignored, while the operator "OR" is
             recognized and can return very different results.
                
                
     "NOT" - The NOT operator is used to pass over any documents that
             contain certain words.  For example:
                
                   rostov NOT sergei
                
             would not return any documents that contained the word "sergei".
                
             As with "AND" and "OR" the lowercase version of this operator is
             ignored.  It  be typed in all uppercase to be used.
                
                
     "ADJ" - The adjacent operator "ADJ" is used to ensure that one word
             is immediately followed by another in the result document.  Therefore,
             "sergei ADJ federov" will return documents with exactly 
             "Sergei Federov" but not any articles that contain the words 
             "Sergei" and "Federov" separately.
                
             As with "AND" and "OR" the lowercase version of this operator is
             ignored.  It  be typed in all uppercase to be used.
                
                
    PARTIAL WORD SEARCHING -- by using the '*' wildcard operator, the user
             can specify the beginning portion of a word which will be matched
             with all words in the database being searched.  For example, the
             search term
                
                   nata*
                
             will match both 'natasha' and 'natalia' (and any other terms 
             beginning with the letters n-a-t-a).
                
                
    PLURAL STEMMING -- the version of the WAIS software being run on
             this machine supports 'plural stemming' -- this means that
             searching with the terms 'computer' and 'computers' will yield
             exactly the same results.
                
                

Questions?  Comments?  Suggestions?

Please send e-mail to gcole@solar.rtd.utk.edu or natasha@ibpm.serpukhov.su. 
 We want to make this information as acessible (and as easy to access) as 
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information.