Tips: Library Search Guide

The Microfinance Gateway Library Search now supports boolean full-text search capability by using the following operators within your search:

+: A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in every row returned.
-: A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any row returned.
: By default (when neither plus nor minus is specified) the word is optional, but the rows that contain it will be rated higher.
< >: These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a row. The < operator decreases the contribution and the > operator increases it. See the example below.
( ): Parentheses are used to group words into subexpressions.
~: A leading tilde acts as a negation operator, causing the word's contribution to the row relevance to be negative. It's useful for marking noise words. A row that contains such a word will be rated lower than others, but will not be excluded altogether, as it would be with the - operator.
*: An asterisk is the truncation operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word, not prepended.
": The phrase, that is enclosed in double quotes ", matches only rows that contain this phrase literally, as it was typed.

ghana housing: find rows that contain at least one of these words.
+ghana +housing: ... both words.
+ghana housing: ... word ``ghana'', but rank it higher if it also contain ``housing''.
+ghana -housing: ... word ``ghana'' but not ``housing''.
+ghana +(>housing <credit): ... ``ghana'' and ``housing'', or ``ghana'' and ``credit'' (in any order), but rank ``ghana housing'' higher than ``ghana credit''.
ghana*: ... ``ghana'', ``ghana's'', ``ghanas''.
"ghana housing": ... ``ghana housing crisis'', but not ``ghana is undergoing a housing crisis''.