LI’s Advanced Search facility is only available to paid subscribers, and provides separate indexes for variable-focus retrieval. These indexes (described in Section 6 of this guide) can be used singly or in combination to construct a search statement. Various filters can be selected to modify the output desired. When you click on Search, the search engine returns a view comprising all the citations whose index values match those specified by the search statement, as modified by any filter(s).

Click on Search Database.

Construct the search term line. This requires four steps, as illustrated in the following practice exercise:

Step 1 - Select an Index: select the index you wish to search, using the drop-down selection box; for this example, choose “Category Codes”;

Step 2 - Specify how to compare items: select the required comparison operator, using the drop-down selection box; for this example, choose “Starting with”;

Step 3 - Specify what you are looking for: type in the search term; for this example, type in “D” (or “d” - you may enter either lower-case or upper-case characters); this means that the search engine will return to you all the citations in the “D” category (Intelligence & Information) - for further details on the Categories Index, see Section 6.4 below.

Step 4 - Add it to your statement: click on Add to add this search term line to the query box.

If you were now to click on Search, the search engine would return all LI material on the broad topic of ‘Intelligence &. Information’. This would constitute a simple query.

However, you can construct a compound query by adding multiple search term lines to the query box. To do this, you simply repeat the above procedure, so as to construct another search term line and add it to the query box. For this example, keep the Category Codes index selection, but choose the “Exactly matching” comparison operator, and type in the search term “E03” (E zero 3). This will select the citations in the third sub-category of the E (Operations) main category dealing with peace-keeping and peace support operations.

If you now click on Add, you will see that this second search term line has been added to the query box. (Note that and is the default connective between the two search term lines; click on the connective to toggle it between and and or).

If you now click on Search, the search engine will return those items whose index values match both of the search term lines, i.e. it will return to you a view of material relating to intelligence aspects of peace-keeping and peace support operations.

Items in a view are presented in groups of twenty, with each group (or part thereof) presented on a separate page -- thus a view comprising 73 items will be presented in four pages, with the fourth page containing only 13 items.

If you mistype a search term line, or change your mind about it, click on its “Wrong” button to the right.

Any of the indexes can be used in any combination, and once you become familiar with the type of material contained in the database, you will quickly come to appreciate the precision with which a carefully-framed search statement can retrieve material relevant to your information requirement. Some helpful examples are provided at the end of Section 7 “Exploiting the Indexes”.

In the lower right corner of the Advanced Search screen you will see four boxes, which can optionally be used to refine the view returned by the search statement:

• The not earlier than dialogue box requires a year-value input, and will exclude from the view all material whose year of publication is earlier than the specified year;
• The not later than dialogue box requires a year-value input, and will exclude from the view all material whose year of publication is later than the specified year;
• The no foreign language check-box will exclude material from non-English language publications;
• The exclude cross-references check-box will prevent the appending of items cross-referenced by material in the view.

The default connective in compound queries is the and connective, so that the view comprises a conjunction of search term lines. This can be toggled between and and or, by clicking on the connective itself.

Sometimes the mixed use of and and or connectives in a compound query can lead to ambiguity. For example, the query “Geographical Index equal to AUSTRALIA and Keywords equal to FRIGATE or Keywords equal to DESTROYER” could yield a very different view from that intended, if the first two search terms were resolved together - you would get a view of Australia’s frigates and the world’s destroyers! The query obviously requires the last two terms to be resolved together. This is accomplished by the use of brackets as shown in the following diagram:

The brackets are added (and removed) by clicking on the appropriate boxes in the search query grid, immediately before and after the group of terms to be resolved together.

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