Aide à la recherche Documentaire
Bibliographic research
Search Book in Catalog
Simpl Search
Searching for a document, searching for an author to view a list of their documents or to assign them to a record during cataloging, etc., are daily tasks for PMB users.
There are different ways to access searches in the Catalog tab, in the form of different choices in the sidebar menu:
searches cover all PMB records: monographs, periodical records (journals), bulletin records (journal issues), and article records;
“Periodicals” searches cover only periodical records (journals);
“Latest records” allow you to consult the most recently added records to the database;
“Predefined searches” allow you to access previously saved multi-criteria “All records” searches (for example, to quickly relaunch a frequently performed search);
“Predefined copies” searches allow you to access previously saved multi-criteria copy searches.
A Boolean expression describes an operation that conforms to the rules of Boolean algebra, in which the operands and the result each take one of two distinct values (either true or false). The operators of Boolean algebra are those of logic: AND, OR, NOT, etc.
In PMB, the AND operator defaults to plus (+), the OR operator defaults to space, and the EXCEPT operator defaults to dash (-).
If the search is vegetables + greens in the title search:
- the title Dried vegetables will not be part of the answers;
- The title Spinach and Greens is a possible answer.
If the search is vegetables – greens :
- the title Spinach and Green Vegetables will not be part of the answers;
- The title Dried Vegetables is a possible answer.
In PMB, the default operator is OR. If you search for two words separated by a space, the response will first contain results that contain both terms, then either OR the other.
The hyphen should not be confused with the EXCEPT operator : the same symbol, “-“, is used for both. The EXCEPT operator is always preceded by a space, while the hyphen will be attached to the word preceding it.
To compensate for the different spellings, when searching for a term including a hyphen, the search will return:
results including the searched compound word with its hyphen;
results including both words (AND);
(results including at least one of the two words (OR), if the default operator is OR).
Middle Ages;
middle AND age;
middle OR age;
With or without accents.
runcation is a symbol that replaces one or more letters in a word. It allows you to search for terms that have the same root by substituting one or more characters with a symbol. In PMB, this symbol is the asterisk (*).
Truncation can be used at the beginning and/or in the middle and/or at the end of a word.
philo* can refer to philo but also to philosopher , philosophy , philology …
*pins may refer to pines , firs , grapins , etc.
*osta*i*h will be able to fire Shostakovich .
Quotation marks
In a search, entering a sequence of characters in quotation marks searches for the sequence of characters as entered (but without taking into account accents or capital letters).
Searching for “The Red and the Black” (with quotation marks) may return:
- Red and black ;
- A Social Portrait: A Study of The Red and the Black.
Start with
In PMB, the operator begins with corresponds to the underscore (underscore, under the number 8 on the French keyboard): “_”.
Used in a search, this means that the title begins with the searched word. Stop words (the, the, the…) are ignored.
_Educ* will return
Education without borders
Educators and young children
If the operator begins with is used with quotation marks, the searched characters will be at the beginning of the title, and empty words are then taken into account.
_”Educ*” will return
Educators and young children,
but will not return
Education without borders.
Parentheses
Parentheses allow you to group different words in your searches and change the order in which operators will be considered.
cat + (dog rabbit) will return results containing either cat AND rabbit or cat AND dog . This search is equivalent to cat + dog cat + rabbit.
Empty words
Empty word
A stop word is a word that does not carry any information. It will not be considered in a search.
By default in PMB, some words are already declared empty depending on the language. For French these are: le, la, les, l’, du, de, des, d’, a, un, une, et, t, au, aux, en.
Stop words are systematically ignored in searches except when placed in quotation marks.
When searching for an authority (authors, publishers, etc.), stop words are not ignored. This allows you to search for the singer Dominique A among the authors by searching for Dominique + A . Similarly, in the all-fields search, stop words are not ignored for authorities, even if they are ignored for the title or the table of contents.
A + time will return for a title search:
- In search of lost time,
- Times and setbacks.
The empty word A is then ignored.
Dominique + A will return for a search on the author:
- Dominique A,
- but not Dominique Pinon.
The empty word A is not ignored.
Relevance
Relevance refers to the match between the search and the returned answers.
In search, relevance is the value assigned to a record. This value is calculated when the search is launched based on the weighting of the searched words.
By default, in PMB, the first results returned are the most relevant, so that the user only has to browse through a small number of pages of results to find the best matches to their search.
Example of a search with 3 words
If we search for several words in the title, for example medicine flu H1N1 , we will get:
- first the results containing the 3 words simultaneously,
- then the results containing two of the three words,
- finally the results containing only one of the three words.
The title is by default overweighted in the all fields search.
With our example of 3 words we get:
first the results containing the 3 words simultaneously
- among these first results, at the top of the list those with the maximum number of words in the title
then those containing two of the 3 words
…
A result that begins with the search term is also overweighted. This overweighting is effective in all searches: in the title, in all fields, among authorities, etc.
If we search for several words in the title, for example red and black , we get:
notices containing either the word red or the word black (the empty words le and et are ignored);
first the results containing the words red and black simultaneously present;
- among these first results, at the top of the list, those which begin with red and black;
then those containing either red or black .
If we look for Bernard among the authors, we will get:
first, authors whose name begins with Bernard (therefore whose surname begins with Bernard );
then the authors whose name (the input element) or first name (the rejected element) contains Bernard .
Sort
Sorting search results involves reordering the results obtained.
By default in PMB, results are sorted first by relevance and then alphabetically by title (ignoring stop words).
To sort the results of a search, click on the icon 
.