1. Simple Search
2. Advanced Search
3. Summary Result List
4. Syntax Query

Simple Search

By typing in one or several keywords, eg: Japanese Occupation, all documents containing those words will be retrieved.

Advanced Search

You can search across the following fields:

Summary Result List

For each search, MISAS provides a summary list of documents, with the most relevant document ranked first and the least relevant last. The summary result list contains the following information:

• Audio-visual item
  "Accession Number", "Programme Titles", Subject Headings"

Syntax Query

- Natural Language
A natural language query can be made up of a single word, a list of words, or a natural language question. For example, the query:
"computer"
will list all documents containing the word "computer".

However, the query:
"how do I attach a printer to my computer"
will list documents on attaching printers to computers first followed by all other documents on printers and computers.

- Phrase Searching
By keying in words within double quotations, documents containing those words in that specific order, with no other in between, will be displayed. For example, the query:
"cordless telephone"
only lists documents with the phrase "cordless telephone". Documents with "cordless" and "telephone" that are apart will not be shown. You could also use the adjacency operator ADJ between terms. For example, entering:
cordless ADJ telephone
will also list documents with the phrase "cordless telephone."

- Fielded Search

In the Advanced Search page, a search can be restricted to documents containing a specific word or phrase in a particular field. For example, entering the query "Berita Singapura" in the Series Title field, will retrieve audio-visual items from this series.

- Truncations

Truncations are specified by using an asterisk (*) as a wild card character.
Eg. 1: a query containing the phrase "geo*" may retrieve documents containing the words geographer, geography, geologist, geometry, or geometrical.
Eg. 2: a query containing the phrase "*fix"may retrieve documents containing the words prefix, suffix, or postfix.
Eg. 3: a query containing the phrase "com*ent" may retrieve documents containing the words commitment, competent, or compliment.

- Boolean Operators: AND (&&); OR (**); NOT

The Boolean operators, AND, OR and NOT, are used to narrow or expand a search.
Note: Boolean operators must be entered in UPPERCASE letters.

- AND (&&)

The AND operator is useful in restricting a search. For instance, when searching for documents containing information on the weather in Boston, a query such as "weather AND Boston" only finds those documents containing both the words "weather" and "Boston". An alternative syntax for this query is "weather && Boston"..

- OR (||)

The OR operator joins two different phrases of a Boolean search together eg "hurricane OR tornado" finds all documents containing either the word "hurricane" or "tornado" (or both). An alternative syntax for this query is "hurricane || tornado".

- NOT

The NOT operator is used to reject documents that contains the specified word. The query "basketball NOT college" lists all documents with the word "basketball", but without the word "college".