By default the keywords field will accept a list of words separated by spaces as in the example shown below:

This query will show all stories that contain the words congress, economy and policy. The spaces are assumed to be Boolean ands (see section on Boolean Operators), meaning that all terms are required to be in all stories retrieved. This is only a small part of the potential power the NewsLibrary search engine offers. Features such as Wildcard Characters and Proximity Operators are also available.

Boolean operators such as and, or, not and near can be used anywhere in any type of search. In the list of search types offered, the logic of the boolean connectors is used, but in some cases you do not need to enter the actual connector(s).

All of the Words: This type of search assumes that spaces between words are treated like the logical and, meaning that all of the terms entered are required to be in all of the items found. A search for Congress economy policy would return all stories that contain all three of these  words exactly as they are spelled. See the section on Wild Cards for information on including alternate spellings such as economies or economic.

Any of the Words: This type of search assumes that spaces between words are treated like the logical or, meaning that results may contain just one of the words or possibly all of the words from your query. The search congress economy policy would return all stories containing the word congress or the word economy or the word policy. Keep in mind that this type of search can produce large search results.

Exact Phrase: This mode assumes that the space between words requires that the words be adjacent to each other and in the exact order in which you enter them. Use this type of search if you are sure the exact phrase, such as electronic banking, must occur in the stories you are looking for.

Advanced: This option enables you to take advantage of full NewsLibrary search syntax. Instead of having spaces automatically interpreted as logical connectors, you enter the precise operators you want. You may also combine different operators in one search statement. For further explanations of the NewsLibrary search syntax, see the sections below on Boolean Operators, Proximity Operators, Field Searching and Wildcard Characters.

Stories Published Within Year / Month: Will find stories published in a particular year or from a period spanning several months. Please note that not all years are available for each of the sources available on NewsLibrary.

Stories Published from <Date 1> to <Date 2>: Any arbitrary date range can be entered here. Enter the month, day, and year of the range of dates to limit your search. These dates are inclusive.

Boolean operators permit you to create more complex queries and can be combined with Wildcards and Proximity Operators. To formulate a more complex query that combines boolean operators, select Advanced as your Search Type on the search form. See the list below for examples.

OPERATOR	DEFINITION	EXAMPLE
and	both terms must be present in the story.	congress and economy and policy
or	ether term must be present in the story.	parliament or government
but, butnot	The word(s) following this operator cannot be present in the story	bill and gates not microsoft

Proximity operators allow you to specify just how close two words must occur in a story to be included in your results. See the examples below.

OPERATOR	DEFINITION	EXAMPLE
near	Same as /10. Words must occur within 10 words of each other	campaign near contributions
/#	Unordered word proximity. Word occurs within +/- # words of another word.	market /3 share
pre/#	Ordered word proximity. Word1 must occur within # words and before word2	road pre/2 charles kuralt

Wildcard characters can be used to match a set of possible characters at any point in a word.

OPERATOR	DEFINITION	EXAMPLE
!	Fills in any number of ending characters	pollut!
*	Fills in a maximum of any five characters	gorba*v
?	Fills in any single character	wom?n
{ }	Finds suffixes specified in brackets	liv{e es ing}

Commonly searched text fields are:

FIELD NAME	DESCRIPTION	EXAMPLE
lead	Beginning of a story	lead(scandal and teacher)
headline	Headline of a story	headline(financial)
byline	Byline or author of the story	byline(barry)
section	Section of the newspaper	section(sports)
date	Publish date of the newspaper	date(last 3 weeks)

Examples of combined field searches:

DESCRIPTION	EXAMPLE
Looks for all stories where economic occurs within 5 words of indicators and in the business section	economic /5 indicators and section(business)
Looks for all stories in which the words defense and budget occur in either the keywords or the lead field, and the word jones appears in the byline	keywords,lead(defense and budget) and byline(jones)

Valid date formats include:

1/31/98   or    1-31-98   or    january 31 1998   or    1/98   or   1998

Examples of date field searches are:

DESCRIPTION	EXAMPLE
Specific Date	date(4/15/98)
Range of dates	date(9-15-97 to 2-28-98)
Before a Specific Date	date(before april 15 97)
After a Specific Date	date(after march 1996)
Relative Dates	date(last 6 months)

From Newest to Oldest: Will return the found stories in reverse chronological order. Stories that were most recently published will appear at the top of your result list.

From Oldest to Newest: Will return the found stories in chronological order. Stories that were most recently published will appear at the bottom of your result list.

By relevance: Will return the found stories in an order that best matches the search terms you have requested. The more frequently these terms appear in a story, the higher its rank in the result list will be.

This allows you to specify the number of abstracts returned in your result list. The top stories matching your search terms and based on the sort order that you have selected will be listed.