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The News & Observer Text Archive


Table of Contents

Logging On Keyword Searching Plurals and Truncation Date Searching
Field Searching Parenthesis Printing and Downloading Logging Off

HELP!

For help using the N&O Archive, please call News Research at 4580 or send a zmail message to RESEARCH.

LOGGING ON

There are three ways to access the N&O Archive:

Netscape - from the NRD web page

MacWais - from any Macintosh in the newsroom

WinWais - from any PC in the newsroom

BASIC KEYWORD SEARCHING

Type your search request in the white box or question window (in the "Tell Me About" window on MacWais and WinWais). Then click on Search. With the following instructions in mind, type in the individual words you want to find.

Simple Boolean Searching

Two or more words in the same document................. and .............. clinton and whitewater

One word or another or both................................. or ................ trash or garbage

Exclude a word from a search............................... not ............... hillary not (health w/2 care)

Two or more words near each other........................ w/ ................ christian w/2 coalition

A word mentioned in a story many times .................. atleast#( ) ..... atleast30(fetzer)

Stop Words
Don't use very common words like "the", "after", and "cannot". If you search for one of these stopwords, the server will not return any results.

Proximity Searching
With this feature, you can search for nuclear w/10 waste to find all stories that have nuclear and waste within 10 words of each other. If the order of the two words is important, then nuclear pre/10 waste will find all stories that have nuclear up to 10 words before waste. Proximity also works within fields; for instance, byline=(joyce w/2 clark) will find every story with a byline that has joyce within 2 words of clark. Note that you must use parentheses around the words you want to look for in the field. For more information and examples of proximity searching, click here.

Nested Booleans
The boolean operators and, or, and not can be used with parentheses to make very precise searches. For example, to look for stories about Bosnia that mention either Bill Clinton or Bob Dole, but not both of them, you can search for bosnia and ((bill and clinton) or (bob and dole) not (bill and clinton and bob and dole)).

"AtLeast" searches
These searches allow you to find stories that are more likely to be specifically about a topic or person than a story where it's just mentioned once or twice. For example, atleast20(clinton) finds every story that has at least 20 occurrences of clinton. "atleast" has to be all lower-case, and there cannot be any spaces between "at", "least", and the number -- at least 20 clinton will not work! For more information and examples of atleast# searching, click here.

PLURALS AND TRUNCATION

The archive system does not recognize plurals if you search for a word in the singular, so you need to either put all variations of the word in your search or truncate the keyword you're searching. Use the asterisk (*) to truncate a word. Truncated words will not be highlighted in the search results. If you want to search for all words that have the same beginning, use stemming. For instance, if you want to find all stories that contain words that start with fire, you can search for fire*, which will match words like fire, fires, fireproof, firetruck, etc.

(pencil or pencils) and kindergarten
OR
pencil* and kindergarten

DATE SEARCHING

For a specific date:

    date=19940704 ... for July 4, 1994
    date=19921225 ... for Christmas day, 1992

For a particular month and year:

    ym=9301 ... for the entire month of January, 1993
    ym=9505 ... for the entire month of May, 1995

For a date range:

    ym > 9401 and ym < 9406 ... for stories between January, 1994 and June, 1994 (does not include January & June stories in the set)
    ym > 9400 and ym < 9413 ... for stories from January 1, 1994 through December 31, 1994.

FIELD SEARCHING

You can search on the following fields:

Sample field searches:

PARENTHESIS

Parenthesis tell the WAIS system what to search first or what terms to search together. For example,

hillary or (chelsea and socks)

(hillary and chelsea) or socks

legislator or legislature not type=letter

(legislator or legislature) not type=letter

PRINTING AND DOWNLOADING

To print a story, pull up the full-text version (not the list of headlines).

    In Netscape, click on the print button at the top of the screen.
    In MacWais, click on File in the upper left corner of the screen and then click on Print.
    In WinWais, click once on File and select Print.

To mail a copy of the story to someone's email address.

    In Netscape, click on File in the upper left corner of the screen and then click on Mail Document. Enter the email address in the To: field. Then click on the Quote Document button. Wait a few seconds until the story is in the text of the message and then click on Send.

To download a copy of the story, pull up the full-text version.

    In Netscape, click once on File and select Save as. Choose the place where you wish to download it to and give it a name.
    In MacWais, click on File and select Save as. Choose the place where you wish to download it to and give it a name.
    In WinWais, click on File and then click on Save. Name the file (it will automatically give it a .DOC extension, unless you specify otherwise) in the "File Name" field and click OK. The file will be saved in ASCII (straight text) format, and stored in the C:\WINWAIS directory.
Want to download more than one story at a time?
    You can print and mail multiple articles if you're using MacWais or WinWais (this won't work on Netscape). If you know what the results of a search will be, and you want to print out every story that matches your search, you can put the directive printer:printername in your search. For instance, byline=whitlock and ym=9512 printer:research4 will send all of the stories printed in December 1995 with Whitlock in the byline to the research4 printer. The HP printer in News Research (research4) is the only printer on which this batch printing feature works. The server will not return any results to your WAIS client. If you want the stories sent to your mailbox instead of to a printer, use the mailto:address directive in your search. page=al and date=19941201 mailto:skrueger@nando.com will mail all of the stories that appeared on page 1 of the December 1 issue to skrueger@nando.com.

LOGGING OFF

Click on File and select Exit or Quit.

Last updated by Sperry Krueger (skrueger@nando.com) on 3/6/96.