3 How to perform an advanced search?

3.1 Objectives

Note: As the Advanced search is quite complex to use, we recommend using the Normal search before refining your search with the Advanced search.

The Advanced search offers different criteria to look for metadata, each of them focusing one of the following aspects: What?, Where?, When?

You can combine What?, Where? and When? search to restrict the query (AND search).

Note: Blank search will find all metadata of the catalogue.

3.2 Access

Select Advanced search in the Search component:

In the What? section, search criteria are related to the metadata content. Through them, in addition to searching only free text in the entire metadata content, you can also search directly in the Title or Abstract fields and add more keywords to customize further search. You can also specify the level of accuracy you wish to reach in performing your search.

1. Click to display Advanced text search options:

Advanced search.png

2. Fill in the fields as follows:

Search option	Description
Either of the word	Find metadata that matches at least one of the specified word (“OR” full text search)
Exact phrase	Find a complete phrase in the metadata content
What?	Same as simple search (“AND” full text search)
Without the words	Exclude text from the search

3. To search by Title or Abstract, type any text into the respective field.

Same as normal search but restricted to the metadata title or abstract.

4. Keywords: searches for specific keywords in the metadata item:

manually: enter list of keywords separated by the ‘|’ character

by clicking to display the keywords selection dialogue window:

The Keyword selection dialogue window enables the selection of a thesaurus and then the selection of a list of keywords in the selected thesaurus.

When selecting several keywords, a “OR” search is done between each keyword, meaning the result will be all the metadata that contain at least one the specified keywords.

5. Map type: select metadata items based on the type of associated media.

6. Search Accuracy: allows tuning the fuzzy mode of the search from imprecise to precise; imprecise means we authorize a degree of error in the term matching

3.3.2 Where? section

In the Where? section, search criteria are related to the geographic extent. They allow you, as in the normal search, either to select your own area of interest or to select a predefined region from the drop-down list. In this section you can also type the geographic coordinates of a specific location that is not available from the above list.

1. Define a geographical area as described in the normal search or enter the geographic coordinates of this area.

2. Select the search type in the drop down list (overlaps by default):

The search type allows advance geometric tests between the search extent and the geographic extent:

The search extent and geographic extent are treated as rectangles.

A relationship between the geographic extent and search extent is selected.

If a metadata item with a geographic extent has the selected relationship with the search extent, the metadata item will be returned.

Type	Description	Graphical explanation
overlaps	All maps with geographic extent overlapping the search extent will be displayed in the results, i.e. the neighbouring countries, the continent of which that country is part of and the global maps.
intersection	Both the geographic extent and the search extent have at least one point in common. This includes points on the boundary of the geographic extent.
encloses	The geographic extent completely encloses the search extent.
is fully outside of	The geographic extent and search extent and have no points in common. The opposite of intersect.
crosses	Not used
touches	The boundary of the geographic extent touches, but does not cross, the boundary of the search extent. This includes search extents touching a corner of the geographic extent.
within	The geographic extent is completely contained within the search extent.