BIBE Thesaurus Help

You can enter terms that pertain to Latin names, common names, sizes, shapes, colors, textures, and locations.

You can fill up to four of the query boxes with individual search terms or Boolean expressions.

Individual search terms in the query boxes are automatically connected to one another by or.

Boolean expressions are sets of words that are connected by the words or, and, and not. No other connecting words can be used. Parentheses are the only punctuation allowed in Boolean phrases. Parentheses indicate that the enclosed words should be interpreted together. For example:

hairy or compound and oval is interpreted differently than hairy or (compound and oval)

In the first Boolean expression, the search is conducted from left to right. In the second Boolean expression, the words in parentheses are searched for first.

You can enter individual numbers, but not ranges of numbers. A unit of measurement is not needed. Searching for numerical data is often too narrow for a good search because there are not usually exact matches.

If your query did retrieve some documents, you will see document icons on the screen that may or may not be attached by lines.

If your query does not match any documents, none will be found. The screen will not show any document icons. Try a new set of search words.

Your query may not work if it has misspellings, if it is too narrow (has too many and connectors), or if your query terms are not in the database.

You delete a query term by clicking the right mouse button on the query term icon and choosing disable. To enable it again, click the right mouse button on the query term icon again and choose enable.

Unnecessary words are called stop words and are automatically eliminated by the program. Examples of stop words are of, for, and on.

The program will truncate your words so that a greater amount of information can be retrieved. For example:

If your query term is stems, the program will search for all words with the root stem.

A single page icon or a book icon will represent your search results. A single page icon represents a single document. A book icon represents more than one document. These icons will be placed either on lines or in between lines.

Single page and book icons positioned on a line mean that they are connected to each of the query terms at the end of that line. The closer the single page and book icons are to a query term, the more related they are to that term.

Single page and book icons placed between lines mean that they are connected to more than two query terms. They are connected to three or four terms.

To know the contents of your query results, click on the single page icon and you will see the results appear on the full screen. Click on the book icon and you will see the results appear on the lower windowpane. A document list will appear and you will need to click on an individual document to see it.

If you want to see all of your search results together, drag your search term icons and place them on top of one another. This action will combine their search results contents.