Search Methodology
Stemmingsearch methodologystemming
A search for dogs will also return hits with the word
dog and a search for parenting will return
results with the words parent and parental.
This is because the search uses stemming to help return the most relevant results. That
is, words are reduced to their stem (or root word) before the search is
performed.
The stemming algorithm relies on common English language patterns - like verbs ending
in ing - to find the stems. This is more efficient that looking up
each search term in a dictionary and usually produces desirable results. However, it
also means the search will sometimes reduce a word to an incorrect stem and cause
unexpected results. To prevent a word or phrase from stemming, put it in
double-quotes.
Understanding how stemming works can help you to create more relevant searches, but
it is usually best not to anticipate how a search term will be stemmed. For example,
searching for gold compass does not return for golden
compass because the search does not recognize gold as
a stem of golden.
Truncationsearch methodologytruncation
Truncation is not currently supported in Evergreen.
Order of Results search methodologyorder of results
By default, the results are listed in order of relevance, similar
to a search engine like Google. The relevance is determined using a number of factors,
including how often and where the search terms appear in the item description, and
whether the search terms are part of the title, subject, author, or series. The results
which best match your search are returned first rather than results appearing in
alphabetical or chronological order.
In the Advanced Search screen, you may select to order the
search results by relevance, title, author, or publication date before you start the
search. You can also re-order your search results using the Sort Results dropdown list
on the search result screen.