Global Search Help

This search provides you with access to a multitude of ABE and family literacy-focused webpages from 52 state agencies and numerous major national and international organizations. The LINCS global search is a very powerful tool. Just follow the instructions.

How do I begin my search?
What are the best ways to use the search program?
How do I interpret the search results?
Now that I have my results, how can I refine my search?
I'm getting too many junk or nonsense results, how can I get fewer more relevant results?
I'm getting too few results, how can I find more documents?
A note about "stop" or "noise" words.

Q: How do I begin my search?
A: The search page includes the following sections (please refer to illustration below):

Search for - The box for you to enter your query
Search sites - The right column, allowing you to search on selected, comprehensive adult education and family literacy sites. (Comprehensive list of national, regional, and international sites are included.) The radio button next to each site allows you to select a site to be searched. The default is to search all sites listed. Scroll further down the search page to view descriptions of the sites.
Search Tips - Basic information providing the most common search tips.

Illustration of above Search description.

Q: What are the best ways to use the search program?
A: Your search can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be. You have the following three options:

Ask a question: In the "Search for" box, you can type a question in plain English, i.e.,
Where can I find resources for integrating technology into teaching and learning?
The search program will search for
resources AND integrating AND technology AND teaching AND learning.
Locate a phrase: In the "Search for" box, type in a phrase, using quotation marks, i.e.,
"welfare to work"
This will locate resources containing your phrase or those adjacent words in that specific order.
Locate a term or a few terms: Think of a term or few terms that best describe what you are trying to locate, i.e. adult, education, policy.
- If you type and search for
  adult education policy
  any documents containing
  "adult" or "education" or "policy" or "adult and education" or "adult and policy" or "education and adult" or "adult and education and policy"
  will be found.
- If you type your terms separated with " +" (there is a space before the +, but not after) as
  adult +education
  you will find documents that have BOTH terms. The "+" (plus) symbol in front of a search item means that the answer MUST INCLUDE that item, and therefore reduces the number of documents retrieved.
- If you type your terms separated with " -" (there is a space before the -, but not after) as
  adult -education
  you will find documents that have "adult" but do NOT include the term "education". Using "-" (minus) means the answer should EXCLUDE references to that item.
- Putting a "-" (hyphen) between words will also force order and one word proximity (there is no space before or after the hyphen), i.e.,
  computer-aided-instruction
  will find documents that have the three terms in the instruction order, next to each other. This is a very powerful search tool in locating your request.
- Using " @N" - The " @" (there is a space before the @ sign) followed by a number indicates how many intersections to locate of the terms in your query. This may be confusing at first, but it is very powerful. See the following example:
  ESL instruction training @1
  will find
  ESL with instruction, or, ESL with training, or, training with instruction.

Note: Only the "+" and "-" operations are valid with a relevance rank search (See search results)

Q: How do I interpret the search results?
A: When the query is submitted for the "Search", the resulting page will provide you with the resulting number of hits (top middle column), and for each document found, the document title, abstract, the match quality graph, "Find Similar", and "Show Matches". Additionally, the left bar on the page provides the terms you used for your query and capability of refining your search through changing the terms used or further tailoring your search through the "Word Forms" option or the "Proximity" option.

The main body of the search results page contains the following items (numbers point to labels on following illustration):

Document title clicking on this will take you to the original document
Abstract gives the first few hundred characters of the document
Result number When a query is submitted, the top of the resulting page will tell the number of documents found. Up to 10 matching documents can be displayed per page. If there are more than 10 documents, links at both the top and bottom of the list will allow you to view the next 10 in sequence.
Match quality graph only shown if relevancy ranking was used. Documents are ordered from best to worst match based on the match quality. The bar graph display indicates the overall quality of the match.
Find Similar will find documents similar to this one. The Find Similar link will find documents that are similar to the corresponding result. It does this by reading the original document to ascertain its main subject matter, and then conducting a relevance-ranked search for those subjects.
Show Matches will show the matches and other information about that document. Match information gives the context of your search terms within the matching document. Matching words will be shown like "Adult Education." Clicking on any hyperlink term will take you to the next matching term. A summary at the top of the in-context view shows information about the document including the time it was last indexed by the search program.
Next goes to next group of matching documents.

Illustration of a global search result page

Q: Now that I have my results, how can I refine my search?

A: The Search for box on the top left (provides the terms you used for your query) - The "Search For" box also allows you to further tailor your query to get to your desired answers, or to submit a completely new query without having to navigate back to the original input form. You can add more terms or change terms (as well as editing) in the "Search for" box.

Word Forms options give you control over how many variations of your query terms will be sought in your search.

Exact is the default, and only exact matches of the word will be allowed.
Plural & possessives - Plural and possessive forms will be found. (s, es, 's)
Any word forms As many word forms as can be derived will be located.

Proximity options give the ability to locate answers with greater precision. The search input form gives you several options to control the search proximity:

sentence: Query items should all reside within the instruction line.
paragraph: within the instruction paragraph or text block.
page (default): All items must occur within HTML document.

Q: I'm getting too many junk or nonsense results, how can I get fewer more relevant results?
A: Try any of the following:

Add some more relevant words to your search using "+"
Decrease the range of the Proximity control to paragraph or sentence.
Make sure Word Forms is set on Exact
Look at the Show Matches information and see if there is a term there that is closer to what you are looking for.
Use the "-" symbol before a word to remove from search
Try hyphenating a phrase together.

Q: I'm getting too few results, how can I find more documents?
A: Try any of the following:

Remove some words from your search
Examine spelling
Set Proximity control to page

A note about "stop" or "noise" words:
A stop word (also called a noise word) is a commonly used word that a search engine has been programmed to ignore. These include words like "a", "and" and "for". (A complete list of stop words can be found here). These words occur frequently in searches and are deemed irrelevant by the global search engine in both building an index for searching and for retrieving results. This helps to speed up the process of searching for results to a query.