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The Culture and Recreation Portal lets you
use a number of different search strategies, on the homepage, on the headers
at the top of screens in the site, and on the Advanced
search screen. The homepage also offers browse lists of websites and
documents, which have been organised by specific subject category or location
or for a particular target audience.
Contents
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Homepage search |
Header search
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Advanced search |
Refining your
search |
| Search
strings | Understanding
your search results |
Search tips
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Other searches |
Homepage search
You may have noticed that there are four boxes
in line in the yellow bar under the header. From left to right they are:
- search for;
- category;
- location; and
- audience.
Each of these boxes enables you to restrict
or narrow your search and ensure you only get useful search results. They
can all be used individually or together in any combination. This is how
they work:
Search for
To search the Culture and Recreation Portal,
enter your search words or phrases, sometimes called search strings,
in the "Search for" box. The search will
then look for your words or phrases in all of the Culture and Recreation
Portal's listed websites and all indexed screens. Results will be returned
for websites matching your search and for specific screens containing
your search words or phrases. See below for more information on how
different types of Search strings work on this
site. You can more closely target your search by using the category
and/or location and/or audience boxes in conjunction with
your search string.
Category
This box is a drop down list of the major categories
for contributing culture and recreation websites. Selecting a category
will restrict your search to only those websites belonging to the selected
category. If you do not select a category, your search will range across all
categories.
Location
This box is a drop down list of the Australian
States and Territories in which contributing culture and recreation
websites are located. Selecting a location will restrict your search
to only those websites in the selected State or Territory. The special
location of "Web" is used for websites which do not have a physical
point of contact. If you do not select a location, your search will
range across all locations.
Audience
This box is a drop down list of the major audience
categories for contributing culture and recreation websites. Selecting
an audience category will restrict your search to only those websites
targeted for the selected audience. If you do not select an audience,
your search will range across all audiences.
Header search
Searching the Culture and Recreation Portal
from the Search Box in the Header at the top right of
every screen enables you to enter your search words or phrases (sometimes
called search strings) in the box while you are on any screen. By using
the radio buttons below the Search Box, you can choose
to restrict your search to only the portal site itself ("On this
site"), or to look for your words or phrases in all of the Culture
and Recreation Portal's contributing websites ("On contributor websites").
See below for more information on how different types of Search
strings work on this site.
Advanced search
The Culture and Recreation Portal has an Advanced
search that enables you to very finely focus your search by category
or sub-category, and/or target audience type, and/or location by State
and capital city or other location in the State. This advanced search
allows you to select multiple categories, audiences and locations, and
to simultaneously select from each of the lists of categories or sub-categories,
and audience, and location.
Refining your search
When you take the option to refine your search,
you will be given the same set of boxes as you use on the homepage. Depending
on your results from your previous search, you may choose either to broaden
or to narrow your search, or to change it altogether. You may do this
by altering your search string or by changing your selections in the category
and/or location and/or audience boxes. We have included
some Search tips below.
Search strings
Search strings are the words or phrases you want
to search for. Each of the examples below shows how changing the way you
enter your search string will change the results you receive from your searches
in the Culture and Recreation Portal.
- The standard search
Sample search: Peter Carey
When you write a search string in the Culture and Recreation portal
(that is, a string of words and phrases for an Internet search engine),
two words together will be searched for together. So your search results
will show every instance where these words occur together.
- Other search options
Sample search: Peter Carey, books
When you use a search string like Peter Carey, books the Culture
and Recreation Portal will return many results because they will return
listings on Peter Carey and listings on books.
Sample search: Peter Carey and books
The Culture and Recreation Portal will
only return responses where Peter Carey and books appear
in the same document or website.
- The more focused search
For a focused search use the audience (who),
subjects (what) and location (where) boxes on the homepage in combination
with the search string.
Sample search: Peter Carey
Subject (what): Film, Video and Interactive Media
Location (where): Melbourne
This search will return all references
to Peter Carey in relation to films held in the websites from organisations
based in Melbourne.
- Using a * wild card
A wild card takes the form of an asterisk *. You can find the asterisk
key on your keyboard above the number 8.
A wild card can be a quick way of getting more results.
For example, as far as our search engine is concerned Australia*
would include Australia, Australian and Australia's.
Understanding
your search results
 When
you do a search on the Culture and Recreation Portal you receive two types
of results.
The first type is "Websites matching your query"
results. See a sample to the left. The search query was "Ned Kelly". The
search has returned three websites with a Ned Kelly focus.
The second type of search results is "Documents
matching your query".
These results provide you, firstly, with a
link to information ABOUT the website from which the document originates,
and then at "Document: ", the results screen provides a link to the document
where the search query is found.
If you have lots of results, what you searched
for may not be obvious on the results screen. You can scroll down and look,
or you can use your browser (an Internet browser like Netscape or Internet
Explorer) to search the screen.
For Netscape go to the Edit menu
and choose Find in Page.... Put in your search text and hit Enter
For Internet Explorer go to the Edit
menu and choose Find (on This Page).... Put in your search text
and hit Enter.
Search
tips
- If there's too many or too
few results
When you get your results back from our search engine you may find there
are a very large number of them. If so, narrow your search by using more
specific syntax in your search string.
If, on the other hand, you do not get enough
responses, or do not get the one you want, widen your search by using
less specific syntax in your search string.
For example:
Tom Roberts and painting 34 responses (less specific)
Tom Roberts and landscape 24 responses
Tom Roberts and shearing 9 responses (more specific)
Look for alternative search strings and combination
of categories from the browse lists (who,what,where) if you do not find
what you are looking for.
Other searches
In addition to our general search facility:
- search this website using the "On
this website" radio button under the search box at the top right
of this (and every) screen within the website
- our Internet
Development Guides have their own contents screen; and
- There
is a separate search which is restricted to our Articles.
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