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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
| Homepage search | Header search | Advanced search | Refining your search |
| Search strings | Understanding your search results | Search tips | 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

Search results screen exampleWhen 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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