Quick Help for WAIS-ISIS implementation

"Casual User"

Please note that if you use the "casual user" interface all you need to know is that:

The right-truncation operator is $
e.g. astronom$
All other boolean operators and field specifications are automatically inserted by means of the pull-down menus.

"Expert User"

You may combine one or more search terms, linking them with boolean operators. A search term is any searchable element defined for a given database, such as subject descriptors, key words, words in titles, author names, etc. The principal boolean operators are the following:

      + (or)    A + B   -->     class union operator
      * (and)   A * B   -->     class intersection operator
      ^ (not)   A ^ B   -->     class exclusion operator
      $         AAA$    -->     right-truncation operator
      $         A $ B   -->     preceeded and followed by one
                                space is the adjacency operator

Each search term might appear in any of the fields of the record. But it is possible, however, to execute a search in a given field and, to do so, you have to add the qualifier of the field to the search term or expression as follows: A/(n) where n is the number of the field.

The principal searchable fields are the following:

  (11)      Title
  (14)      Publication, imprint
  (16)      Series
  (18)      ISBN
  (41)      Personal-authors and corporate bodies
  (61)      Subjects
  (62)      Classification code
  (63)      Abstract