How to search GFIS
The GFIS search serves to find reliable and accurate information on forests. The improved category search helps to mark off irrelevant information from search results. The most important thing is to choose terms that precisely describe the information that is necessary to find. The list of the pages that include the terms will be shown under the search box. Results appear in order of relevance so that the latest results are shown on the first page.
A control panel appears at the bottom of the result page when more than 10 results have been found. The control panel helps the user to navigate through the search results. It consists of five buttons: next page, last page, previous page, first page and GO. The GO button takes the user to the page which has been entered in the page number field. At the top of the results page you can see how many results have been found with the search terms used and how much time the search has taken.
TERMS
You can use two kinds of terms: single terms and phrases. A single term is a single word such as "forest" or "forestry". A phrase is a group of words surrounded by quotes such as "forest industry". Multiple terms (single terms or phrases) can be combined together with the Boolean operators to form more detailed search.
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EXAMPLE: single term: forestry phrase: "forestry research" multiple terms: forestry research, "forestry research" "GFIS search" |
LETTERS
All search letters will be understood in the GFIS search regardless of how they are typed. The GFIS search is not case-sensitive.
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EXAMPLE: FORESTRY, forestry, FoReStRy all these produce the same result. |
BOOLEAN OPERATORS
Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. GFIS supports AND, OR, NOT, "+" (plus sign) and "-" (minus sign) as Boolean operators.
OR
The OR operator search for the results where either of the terms exists.
AND
The AND operator is the default conjunction operator in GFIS. The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document.
NOT
The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. The symbol "!" can be used on behalf of NOT.
NOTE! The Boolean operators must be written always in CAPITAL LETTERS ONLY.
+ (plus sign)
Plus sign is used to find results that all include the term which has the plus sign on front of it.
NOTE! There must be a space before the plus sign.
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EXAMPLE: Forestry +research RESULTS WILL CONSIST OF PAGES WHICH INCLUDE WORD FORESTRY AND ALWAYS RESEARCH ASWELL. |
- (minus sign)
The minus sign is used to avoid results delivered for a certain term. It is used mainly for two reasons, namely when only partial information is needed or when a term has several meanings.
NOTE! There must be a space before the minus sign.
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EXAMPLE: Forestry -research RESULT WILL CONSIST OF PAGES WHICH INCLUDE TERM FORESTRY BUT NOT RESEARCH. |
WILDCARD SEARCHES
GFIS supports single and multiple character wildcard searches. In order to perform a single character wildcard search, use the "?" symbol. In order to do a multiple character wildcard search, use the "*" symbol.
The single character wildcard search looks for matching terms with a single character replaced. For example, to search for "silviculture" or "sylviculture" you can use the query: s?lviculture
Multiple character wildcard searches look for zero or more characters. In order to search for "forest", "forests" or "forestry", for example, you can use the query: forest*
NOTE! The wildcard cannot be used as the first character of a query.
SEARCH EXAMPLES
Query expression:
forest
Finds results that:
contain the term "forest"
Query expression:
forest OR industry
Finds results that:
contain the term "forest" or "industry" or both
Query expression:
forest industry, +forest +industry, forest AND industry
Finds results that:
contain both terms "forest" and "industry"
Query expression:
(forest OR industry) AND global
Finds results that:
contain the term "global" and also contain "forest" and/or "industry"
Query expression:
forest*
Finds results that:
contain terms that begin with "forest", for example "forest", "forests" and "forestry"
