 |
Searching |
|
|
 |
Search operators
Typing in search terms
Browse boxes
Searching in single fields
Searching across multiple fields
Applying limits
Modifying your search
Search history
Searching
Both simple and advanced searches can be carried out from the one search screen.
You can search for information in the following specific fields;
- Author (includes individual authors, editors and corporate names)
- Title (both monographs and journals)
- Subject (descriptors taken from the VOCED thesaurus as well as other keywords)
- Date of Publication
OR
You can use the Every Possible Field to search for the term(s) across a range of fields, including:
- Author
- Title
- Subject
- Date of Publication
- Abstract
- ISBN
- ISSN
- Publisher
- Document number
The VOCED search engine allows you to use a number of operators to expand, narrow or refine your search.
| Operators | What they mean | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| & | & is the symbol used for the Boolean operator AND. It narrows a search as it will only find records that contain ALL of the words entered. | competence & Australia will only find records that contain both competence and Australia |
| | | | (pipe symbol) is the symbol used for the Boolean operator OR. It broadens a search as it will find all records that contain at least one of the terms entered; the pipe symbol looks like two vertical lines one on top of the other. It can usually be found on the right-hand side of the keyboard on the same key as the backslash (\). | women | girl will find either women or girl or both women and girl |
| ! | ! is the symbol used for the Boolean operator NOT. It narrows a search as it excludes terms from the search. | competence ! australia will find records containing competence but not Australia |
| "" | The double quotes is used to search for phrases | "competency based education" will only find those records where competency based education occurs as a phrase. |
| $ | $ can be used to truncate a term to find all words that begin with the term entered but with multiple endings | apprentice$ will
find apprentice, apprentices, apprenticeship, etc "misko j$" will find misko j, misko josie, misko john, etc |
| * | * is the wildcard symbol and can be used in the place of a single letter within a word | organi*ation will find both organisation and organization |
| : | the colon is used in the Date of Publication field to search for a range of years | 2000:2005 will find documents published between 2000 and 2005 |
| = | used to search for documents published in a certain year | =2000 to search for documents published in 2000 |
| < | used to search for documents published before a certain year | <2000 will find documents published before 2000 |
| <= | used to search for documents published in or before a certain year | <=2000 to search for documents published in or before 2000 |
| > | used to search for documents published after a certain year | >2000 to search for documents published after 2000 |
| >= | used to search for documents published in or after a certain year | >=2000 to search for documents published in or after 2000 |
There are two ways of entering search terms:
- Type the search term/query in the search field(s)
- Browse, select and paste search terms from the Browse boxes
Type the search term in the field(s) you wish to search and click on the search button. Searching is NOT case sensitive and all punctuation (except the Boolean operator symbols & | !) is ignored.
The Author, Title, Subject, and Date of Publication fields have ‘Browse’ buttons next to them. Clicking on the button opens a pop-up box which contains all entries from that field. You can select and paste terms from the box into the search fields, making searching easier as it eliminates ‘trial and error’ searching.
Example: Browse Subjects
A Shows the name of the field from which the information comes
B Type in one or more words and click on Find to go to that item or the closest match in the list
C Click on the letter/number to bring up the corresponding section of the browse list
D This is the list of terms indexed in this field. The numbers in brackets indicate the number of times the term occurs in that field. To see the vertical scroll bar, drag the horizontal scroll bar to the right; or click on one of the items in the list and use either the up/down key on your keyboard or the mouse scroll button to scroll the list
E This button adds selected terms to the search field. Click on a term to select it. To select more than one consecutive term, hold down the shift key; to select non-consecutive terms, hold down the Ctrl key. Please note that the default Boolean operator when combining multiple terms within a field is OR; if you want a different operator, you will need to type it in between the terms in the search field
F Click on this button to close the pop-up box and return to the search screen
You can enter multiple terms in any one field by using Boolean operators. The order in which the terms are entered is important as the search engine will search from left to right.
The default operator is | (OR), so if you enter multiple terms within a field without any operators, they will be linked with |.
Searching across multiple fields
To the left of each search field is a button that allows you to link the separate fields with one of the Boolean operators. Click on the button to select the preferred Boolean operator.
Tick the checkboxes to limit search results to a specific type of content. You may select more than one limit. If more than one box is ticked, the Boolean operator AND is used, except if both WELL database and ALNP database are selected; then OR is used and the search will retrieve records from both databases.
If no limits are selected, then the entire database is searched.
The following limits are available:
| Journal articles | includes records of journal articles as well as journals. |
| Last five years | covers the period from 2001 to 2006. To search for documents published in a specific year, or a specific range of dates, use the Date of Publication field. |
| Full text online | only includes records of those full text documents that are freely available online. |
| Australian documents | only includes documents published in Australia. To search for documents about Australia, add Australia to the Subject field. |
| WELL resources | a special collection of resources from the Workplace English Language and Literacy (WELL) Programme. The Programme is administered by the Australian Dept of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) and provides assistance for the delivery of workplace-based language, literacy and numeracy training activities and the development of resources in providing these training activities. |
| ANLP resources | a special collection of resources from the National Adult Literacy Project (ALNP). The project is managed by the Australian Dept of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) and provides funding for a diverse range of projects from service provision to research and resource development to enhance adult literacy on a national level. |
| Reframing the Future | NCVER has a caretaker role in managing the Reframing the Future website and publications following the program’s closure in March 2009. Reframing the Future was a vocational education and training workforce development initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments. NCVER will maintain www.reframingthefuture.net until the end of 2010. This website contains a collection of electronic resources and details of how copies of print publications can be obtained. NCVER will continue to provide access to these resources through our VOCED database at: www.voced.edu.au |
You can modify your original search by clicking on the Modify Search button on the Search Results page. A search page retaining your original query will appear. You can enter additional terms to further refine your search.
The Search History box contains the searches you have performed in the current session. It allows you to combine and/or re-run searches. You can also print, save or email the search strategies.
A Tick the check box(es) to select the search(es) you want to combine and/or re-run.
B Shows the number of records retrieved in the search.
C Select either AND or OR to combine two or more searches.
D This search is a result of combining the first and fifth searches.
E This allows you to Save, Email or Print the search strategies.
F Clears the ticks from the check boxes
Please note: if there are Boolean operators within searches and you try and combine these searches, OR will override AND to avoid any anomalies in the search.