Use the browser's BACK button to return to the Search Screen

Technical Requirements to Access the CITY Database

In order to use the "Word Wheel" feature, which is offered as part of the "Advanced Search" option, a fully Java enabled browser such as version 3.0 and higher of Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer is required for the CITY Database.

See also below under: Using the Word Wheel

Searching CITY

Search options

The CITY Database offers three different search options:

1. The Keyword Search allows you to search across all indexes of the database. The words which were entered in your search statement can appear in any of the indexes and fields of the database records.
2. The Advanced Search allows you to search one or more indexes at once by using logical (or Boolean) operators to link the indexes. The selection of words or subject terms is made easier by the Word Wheel feature which allows the selection of the actual words or terms used in the indexes.
3. The Easy Search provides general lists of organisations which have been preselected for you by certain broad subject categories. To click on any of the listed subject categories will produce an instant list of organisations on that topic.

Tips

Keep these guidelines in mind when you are searching:

• Capitalisation. You can use either upper case or lower case letters. A search for auckland rugby finds organisations and groups starting with the name 'Auckland Rugby...')
• Names of people. Personal names are not important when searching the CITY Database, however if you want to search for the name of a person, use the Keyword Search and enter the name in natural order. For example, entering gavin rugg will locate an organisation with the Contact Name of Gavin Rugg
• Punctuation. You can omit punctuation in your search statement, except for the and-or-not symbols which are used as logical (or Boolean) operators: & ? ! and the colon for range searches (:). If these characters need to be interpreted literally use quotation marks or replace the punctuation mark with a space

Buttons and controls

Searching using words or phrases

See also below under: Searching for dates - Relational operators

Enter key concepts, words or terms into a search box. Single words can be combined with various logical (or Boolean) operators.

Truncation

• To search for words which have the same beginning, the same stem, use an asterisk at the end of one or more words. e.g. yacht* sail*

• Logical operators AND OR NOT
• For AND use the symbol ' & ' with spaces on either side
• For OR use the symbol ' / ' with spaces on either side
• For NOT use the symbol ' ! ' with spaces on either side
• Proximity operators
• To search for words which occur near each other
• use the symbol 'p#' (preceding) and 'w#' (within)
• Proximity operators cannot be used with phrases

For examples see the table below.

Enter this statement…	To find…
motor boat club	a phrase (the words entered, occurring in the order as entered)
yacht* / sail*	either or both words entered
boat* & yacht*	records that contain both words. Records that contain only one of the words will be ignored
yacht* ! multihull yacht*	"yachts and yachting" organisations but excluding those with "multihull"
Royal p5 yacht*	The word 'Royal' preceding the word 'yacht...' by 5 words or fewer
Auckland w5 water / lifeguard* / rescue	The word 'Auckland' occurring within 5 words of the word 'water' or 'lifeguard...' or 'rescue'

Search statements where words or subject terms have been joined by the logical operators & / ! are evaluated in left-to-right order: Zealand & yacht* / boat finds organisations or groups with the words 'Zealand' AND 'yacht...' or organisations with the word 'boat'. The evaluation order can be controlled with the use of brackets: Zealand & (yacht* / boat) will find organisations with the words 'Zealand and 'yacht...' OR 'Zealand' and 'boat'

Searching for dates

• 
• Date formats
• To search for a date, use any reasonable format, including but not limited to the examples shown below:

  31-Dec-98

  Dec 31, 1998

  1998 Dec

  Dec 98

  December 1998

  12-98

• Do not use a forward slash to separate date elements unless you surround the date with quotation marks ("12/31/98").
• Logical (or Boolean) operators AND-OR-NOT

See also above under: Searching using words or phrases

• You can use the logical operators & / ! between dates to create AND-OR-NOT searches. For example, May 1998 / June 1998 finds all dates in May or June 1998.
• Relational operators
• You can use the relational operators such as 'less than', 'greater than', and use range searches for dates, other numeric values and also text
• Use the symbols shown in the table below
• When relational operators are used with a partial date, the search will find all dates from the beginning of that date (first day of the month or year)
• A range consists of two values, low and high, separated by a colon. Include spaces on either side of the colon

Symbol	Meaning	Example
<	less than (before)	< 1998 finds dates before January 1, 1998
<=	less than or equal to	<= 15-6-98 finds dates on or before June 15, 1998
>	greater than (after)	> 1998 finds dates after December 31, 1997
>=	greater than or equal to	>= 500 finds values greater than or equal to 500
:	between	1997 : 1998 finds dates from Jan. 1, 1997 through Dec. 31, 1998 (inclusive) 200 : 300 finds values between 200 and 300 (inclusive)

Searching using exact terms

• 
• Exact terms, subject terms or names are used in the database to index in a consistent and controlled manner the name(s) and the subject matter of groups and organisations
• Using these terms ensures that all records in the database with that name or subject are located
• Examples of exact terms in the CITY database are: 'Sports and Exercise' (Subject term), 'Non-profit Groups' (Term for an Organisational type), or, 'Bucklands Beach' (Area)
• To search using an exact term, precede it with an equal sign (=sports and exercise)
• To find out what terms are used in this database, you can check the full records under the headings: Subjects, Demographic & Organisational Type, Area. When using the Advance Search option these terms can also be located by using the Word Wheel.

The Advanced Search Option

• 

  The Advanced Search allows you to search one or more indexes at once by using logical (or Boolean) operators to link the indexes. The selection of words or subject terms is made easier by the Word Wheel feature which allows the selection of the actual words or terms used in the indexes.

  Selecting indexes

  

  The table below explains the indexes which are offered as part of the Advanced Search option.

  Index Name	Description	What to enter
  Organisation or Group Name	Indexes all significant words from the official name, alternative or other known names of the organisation	Enter the first two words of the name (e.g Otahuhu United) or any significant or key words from the name (e.g. Radio Association)
  Subject	Subject words or terms with controlled formats are used to descibe and index the activities and function a specific organisation has in the community	Enter significant words such as 'culture' 'business' 'radio'
  Area or Locations	Geographical terms and phrases are used to describe the area or location of the organisation's domicile address, its venues and extent of its geographic activities	Enter geographic names e.g. 'Auckland' 'Otahuhu' or geograohic words such as 'nationwide'
  Demographic Categories	Demographic terms are used to index the organisation's relevance for age, gender, ethnicity and nationality	Enter demographic terms such as 'adults' 'disabled' 'women' 'special needs' 'Vanuatu'

  Using the Word Wheel

  

  • The "Word Wheel" feature allows users to browse a specific index of the database with the purpose of selecting keywords or subject terms which occur in that index. Once you have selected your keywords or subject terms you can paste them into your search statement
  • Using the "Word Wheel" avoids trial and error searching to find existing indexed terms
  • Click the "Word Wheel" button to display a dialogue box that shows keywords and terms that you can search for
  • For more information, click the Help button in the "Word Wheel" dialogue box or click Word Wheel User Guide here to access these help pages
  • NOTE: "Word Wheel" requires version 3.0 or later of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer or any other browser which is fully Java enabled

  Formulating a search statement

  

  • When selecting words or terms to create a search statement you can use a range of search operators to combine the words in your statement
  • For details see under the above section Searching CITY
  • The table below repeats examples of the most important logical operators

  Enter this statement…	To find…
  motor boat club	a phrase (the words entered, occurring in the order as entered)
  yacht* / sail*	either or both words entered
  boat* & yacht*	records that contain both words. Records that contain only one of the words will be ignored
  yacht* ! multihull yacht*	"yachts and yachting" organisations but excluding those with "multihull"
  Royal p5 yacht*	The word 'Royal' preceding the word 'yacht...' by 5 words or fewer
  Auckland w5 water / lifeguard* / rescue	The word 'Auckland' occurring within 5 words of the word 'water' or 'lifeguard...' or 'rescue'

  Using the AND-OR-NOT droplist

  

  • Use the logical (or Boolean) operators from the AND-OR-NOT droplist in front of the search box to combine the search statement in one index with the search statement in the next index
  • The logical operator determines how the search result from the first box is to be evaluated in terms of the search statement in the next search box. Boxes are evaluated from top to bottom (first box to last)
  • You can use one or two or all indexes

  Advanced Search examples

  

  Example A.
  1. Organisation or Group Name: social / club
  AND
  2. Subject: arts and music
  AND
  3. Area and Location: Waiheke Island

  Example B.
  1. Organisation or Group Name: (yacht* / sail*) ! vision impaired
  AND
  2. Subject: yachting
  NOT
  3. Area and Location: Auckland

  Example C.
  1. Organisation or Group Name: (rugby / football) ! (league / American)
  OR
  2. Subject: football ! (Rugby League / soccer)
  NOT
  3. Area and Location: nationwide / North America
  NOT
  4. Demographic Category: women / girls

  Displaying CITY Records Located by a Search

  

• A successful search finds one or more records, which are displayed in your Web browser as a report. Use the browser's controls as you normally would,
• to browse, print, go back, save to floppy disk or your hard drive, email to yourself, etc.
• Make use of the buttons and controls provided by the record display, such as 'Start Again', 'Help', 'Next xxx record', 'Previous xxx record', etc. For further details refer to the section on Buttons and controls above
• The number of records located by the search is given in the Title line at the very top of the browser's screen
• Records are displayed in two different formats:
  1. Brief record display
     • The brief record display appears first. Browse through the list of organisations by using the 'Next' and 'Previous' buttons which mostly appear at the bottom of the page
     • To view the full information of organisations or groups click on any blue highlighted organisation name. All records in the list will then be displayed in full detail and the record which you selected and clicked on will be listed first
     • If your search has not found the organisations which you wanted, you can use the browser's 'Back' button to return to the search screen and amend or alter your search statement. If you decide to try a new search altogether use the 'Start Again' button to return to the main menu to start a new search
  2. Full record display
     • The full record will list all the information which has been collected about an organisation or group. Most of the information is directly provided by the organisation or group themself and the date at which the information was updated last is given at the bottom of the record
     • The full record also lists the subject words and terms which have been used to index the information. Subject words from up to three different index groups may appear on a full record. This information can be valuable to find out what terms or words to use in your search. They are listed under three different categories:
     • Subjects
     • Demographic and Organisation Type
     • Area

  Troubleshooting your Search

  

  If you are experiencing difficulties with a search, a few of the most common problems and their suggested solutions are listed below.

  If other messages appear, please take note of the details and then contact the Library; see How to contact a Librarian below.

  "Unable to recognise as a correctly formed query"

  

  The search programme of the database cannot understand the search statement.

• This could possibly be due to:
• Typographical errors or spelling mistakes in your search statement
• Mismatched quotation marks or brackets which have not been closed
• An extra search symbol which stands for a logical or relational operator (e.g. you typed car / auto / instead of car / auto)
• Missing quotation marks around symbols that can be misinterpreted (e.g."http://www.aut.ac.nz/services")
• Check your search statement for these errors and try your search again
• If you cannot determine what caused the error, try a simpler search without the complications of brackets and quotation marks. Enter one keyword which describes the type of organisation or group which you are trying to locate and see whether you get a result. If your search finds any organisations using this strategy, look at the full records of these organisations for terms and words which are used in the indexes. Now use these words and terms to perform another search
• If you are using the Advanced Search option, use the Word Wheel to find relevant terms and words which are used in the indexes
• If after following these strategies you still have no success, refer to the sections on Searching CITY above
• If you need to contact a Librarian, see How to contact a Librarian below

  "I found too many records"

  

  There are various strategies you could employ to improve the result of your search. See also under Searching CITY above.

• You might have used a truncated word, e.g. 'yacht*'; omit the asterisk and try one or two of the full words, e.g. 'yacht / yachting'
• The word which you have used in your search is too general. Try and use a more specific word or combine your general word with a more specific one, e.g. 'dogs & training' (logical operator 'AND'). If your search finds any organisations using this strategy, look at the full records of these organisations for terms and words which are used in the indexes. Use the most appropriate terms or words for another search
• Select the Advanced Search option and use the Word Wheel to browse through the indexing terms. Select the terms or words which are the most relevant ones for your enquiry and paste them into your search statement

"I did not get any records but the message 'No records found by latest query"

• 
• Check your search statement for any errors and try the search again. See above: "Unable to recognize as a correctly formed query"
• If you are not sure how to spell the word which you are using in your search statement, use the stem of the word only by using an asterisk at the end of it, e.g. 'colo*' or separate several possible spellings with a forward slash, the logical operator 'OR", e.g. color / colour
• If your search statement includes any of the logical operators (& / !) or if you are doing a range search ( : ), put spaces around the symbols
• Do not use the words 'and', 'or', 'not' as logical (or Boolean) operators, use the symbols instead: & / !
• Try and broaden your search statement by using the logical operator ' / ' (or) instead of ' & ' (and) Using ' / ' (or) means either word can be present. A search for ' yacht* / boat ' finds organisations with either the word 'yacht...' or with the word 'boat'. Using ' & ' (and) means both words must be present in the same organisation record

How to contact a Librarian

If you need further help with searching the CITY database or have any questions or suggestions regarding the database then contact a Librarian at Auckland City Libraries as suggested below. Please let us know if you come across any other error messages, and we will endeavour to help you.

To contact a Librarian choose one of the following options:

• ring the Central City Library, telephone 377 0209 and ask for information from the CITY database
• email

If you would like to register your Club, Group or Organisation to be listed on the CITY database or if you require any of the other services provided from the CITY database go to the CITY database page which appears under 'Explore your community' on the Libraries' Web site.

         Use the browser's BACK button to return to the Search Screen