Help on constructing queries
Help at a glance:
distance learning internet
finds both distance learning and internet, as will 'distance AND learning AND internet'
distance learning -internet
finds distance learning but not internet
internet |web
finds internet or web, as will 'internet OR web'
Searches are not case sensitive, so it is not necessary to capitalise any terms you wish to search.
Currently you can limit by publication type, the default will search Any type.
Sort your results with the drop-down menu. The default is by Year, which returns the most recent citations first.
TIMELIT currently supports basic Boolean search syntax in all search fields.
Phrase searching
Use double quotation marks when you want to search for terms in a particular order. If you don't use the quotations TIMELIT will search for multiple words in any order.
e.g."postgraduate education"
"clinical competence"
Boolean
AND
TIMELIT automatically uses the Boolean operator AND unless you instruct it to do otherwise.
e.g. To find items that contain the words preventive and medicine in the title of a citation, enter preventive medicine in the Title Field.
e.g. To find citations written by more than one author enter the names in Author Field. Entering laidlaw hesketh would find all citations that had been written by authors named laidlaw and hesketh.
e.g. TIMELIT automatically uses AND between fields of the database. If you enter lj robertson in the author field and medical teacher in the Journal Field it will automatically find everything that author has written in that journal.
| OR
Use the symbol | next to the consequent terms (no space). The OR operator is useful when you want to broaden a search.
e.g. worksheets |handouts will find every citation
e.g. osce |"Objective Structured Clinical Examination" will find every citation with the first term OR the second phrase or both
- NOT
Use the symbol - next to the (no space) a term you wish to eliminate within a field. This will help narrow your search results.
e.g. curriculum -dental entered in the keyword field will find all citations with the keyword curriculum that do not also have the keyword dental.
Web page updated 10/08/2001
