In addition to our
help with searching, the information below provides helpful hints and tips for using our
simple search:
Selecting a Search Term or 'Keyword'
Deciding on a suitable search term or 'keyword' is crucial to finding the information you are looking for. Try using words that best describe what you are looking for. For example, if you are looking for information about libraries, try adding the keyword 'library' or 'libraries'. Sometimes, it is better to use a number of keywords, to refine your search, i.e. if you want to know about computers in libraries, add the keywords 'library computers'. This will provide you with a more relevant list of search results. Remember the more specific your keywords are, the better your results should be!
Capitalisation
The simple, advanced and A-Z searches on this website are case sensitive. If all the keywords are typed in using lower case, for example 'car park', the search results will include pages including the words 'car', 'cars', 'park', 'parks', 'parking' and so on. If your keywords include initial capital letters, for example if you are searching for a name or a title, such as 'High Force', the search will find results for those exact words. The use of capitalisation allows you to be more specific in your searches and only find results that contain the exact words you have entered.
Wildcards
Use an asterisk (*) for wildcard searching. For example, a search on 'plan*' would find many words beginning with 'plan', such as 'planning', 'plans' and 'planned'. Of course, you will have a greater chance of finding what you want if you combine this type of search with something more specific. For example, you may be searching for details of 'waste planning'. Using the search term 'waste plan*' may help you to find the information.
Phrase Searches
Enclosing keywords in "quotation marks" will search for that exact phrase, and may improve your search results. For example, a search for "corporate plan" will produce specific search results where both corporate and plan are both included in the results.
