Search tips

Quick Search

Quick Search is a basic search facility which allows you to search the entire database or any one of the four sub-sections. Simply enter your search terms and click on the Go button.

Options:

All	Searches all records in database
Market	Searches all hard copy market research reports available on open-access in BIPC1
Company	Searches items published by companies, e.g. house journals, product literature, annual reports (non-current), etc. as well as stockbroker reports
Journal	Searches trade and business journals available both in BIPC1 and other parts of the library
Directory	Searches trade directories available on open-access in BIPC1
Search Hints	Search words are ANDed by default so there is no need to add AND between words, e.g. "london paris" means "london and paris" To perform a boolean OR in your search query use '\|' or 'OR' e.g. "england \| france" or "england OR france" In order to exclude a word from your search results prefix the word with '-' e.g. "paris -london". Please note that the excluded word cannot be at the start of a search as it might produce too many results, and 'not' is treated as a search word and not a keyword. Use * for truncation, for example, engineer* will search for documents containing the words engineer, engineers, engineering, etc. Please note, this only works when used at the end of a word which is at least 3 characters long and cannot be used for more than 3 words in a search query e.g. "eng* ger* ind* spa*" is invalid In order to search for a phrase, place double quotes around them e.g. "london bridge" The search facility is not case sensitive. ENGINEERING AND EUROPE will retrieve exactly the same records as engineering and Europe. It is possible to find acronyms in the records by including or dropping the fullstops in your search query e.g. to find "B.I.P." you can type in "bip" or "b.i.p." Common words such as "with, the, but, can" and single characters are ignored as they match too many records but a search will be carried out on any valid search words and any common words ignored will be reported. However if your search only consists of common words or single characters no results will be retrieved. '+','~' will be ignored.

Advanced Search

The Advanced Search option offers a much more sophisticated search facility. You must select one of the four sub-sections, Market, Company, Journal or Directory. Market is the default setting. The other sub-sections can be selected by clicking on the blue highlighted menu bar. Each of these four sub-sections has a range of fields which can be searched individually or as a combination.

For example, in market, the following fields can be searched:

Location	This refers to the shelf location of the document. A typical shelf reference for a market research report would be (B) AL 90 Business. When searching in the location field however, the (B) and Business parts of the reference are discarded, so search only for AL 90. You can broaden the search by entering only AL. Please note, when entering a shelf reference, you must use a space between the letters and the number, e.g. AL(SPACE)90 You can improve searching of shelf locations by placing double quotes around the reference e.g. "AL 639 -E(2)"
Title	You can enter all or part of a title
Journal Title	This refers to market research reports which appear in journal format such as Mintel Leisure Intelligence or Market Research Europe. These reports are kept in the Journal section and have journal shelf references, e.g. AL 639 -E(3) but are located in the Market section of the database due to the nature of the material they contain. Again, you can enter all or part of a journal title.
Publication Year	You can enter a year between 1980 and the current year, enter a selection of years separated by '\|' e.g. 2000\|2002 or enter a range of years separated by '-' e.g. 2000-2003, or search for records before or after a year, e.g. -2000, means up to and including 2000, 2000-, means after and including 2000.
Issue Number	This field only applies to market research reports which appear in journal format (see above) and is generally the month in which the report was published.
Publisher	Allows you to search for reports by specific publishers, e.g. Mintel, Key Note, Datamonitor, etc.

The following fields are included in the Company sub-section:

Name	You can either enter all of a company name or part.
Title	This field refers to the title of the document, for example "Barclays Merchant Services News" which is a house journal produced by Barclays PLC.
Extra Information	This field provides additional descriptive information on particular items.
Website Address	Refers to the company website.
Country	Refers to the host country of the company.
Holdings	This field provides details of the library’s holdings for specific items.
Format	Format refers to the type of document, e.g. house journal, product literature, annual report, etc. Select an option from the drop-down menu.

The following fields are included in the Journal sub-section:

Location	The journal section includes items from other parts of the library’s collections, e.g. Humanities or Science, if they are considered relevant to Business Readers. In the case of Humanities journals, the location is listed simply as “Humanities”, although the exact shelf reference is usually provided in the Extra Information section. In the case of Business and Science journals, the (P) prefix is discarded when searching. You can improve searching of shelf locations by placing double quotes around the reference e.g. "AL 639 -E(2)"
Title	You can enter all or part of a title.
Publisher	Refers to the journal publisher.
Extra Information	Provides additional information, including the shelf reference in the case of items which are held in the Humanities collection.
Website Address	Refers to the journal or publisher’s website where applicable.
Holdings	This field provides details of the library’s holdings for specific items.

The following fields are included in the Directory sub-section:

Location	A typical shelf reference for a directory is (B) AA 654 Business but you should discard the prefix (B) and the suffix Business when searching. You can improve searching by shelf locations by placing double quotes around the reference e.g. "AL 639 -E(2)"
Title	You can enter all or part of a title.
Publisher	Refers to the publisher of the directory.
Publication Year	You can enter a year between 2000 and the current year, enter a selection of years separated by '\|' e.g. 2000\|2002 or enter a range of years separated by '-' e.g. 2000-2003, or search for records before or after a year, e.g. -2005, means up to and including 2005, 2000-, means after and including 2000.
Extra Information	Provides details about content.

When using the Advanced Search option, always click on the Search button to search. The Reset button allows you to clear the screen.

Browse Terms

Each of the four different sections of the database allows you to perform a subject search using the Browse Terms option. Select the index terms you wish to search by highlighting them and clicking on the Add button. This will add the terms to the Selected Terms box underneath.

The index terms are part of a hierarchical thesaurus. To reveal the hierarchical structure of a term, highlight the term and click on the Expand button. Please note that in order to expand a term you must first select the round button adjacent to the Browse box. Alternatively, if you wish to reveal the hierarchical structure of a selected term, highlight the term and click the round button adjacent to the Selected Terms box. To go back to the full A-Z list of terms, click on the Find button.

A typical example of a hierarchical string would be:

FOOD (Root index term) – Dairy products – Yoghurt

You can select as many indexing terms as you like but remember to select ANY if you are searching for items on any of the selected subject areas. To search for items combining all of the selected subject areas, select ALL. If you want to remove terms the selected terms box, highlight them and click on the Remove button.

The selected terms can be used in conjunction with any of the other search fields.

Results

The results of your search can be sorted using the Sort By drop-down menu. The following options are available:

Location (Lists results alphabetically by shelf mark)

Publisher (Lists results alphabetically by publisher name)

Publication Year (most recent first)

Record

Click on the blue highlighted name of an item to get the full record. You can either select a new record by using the drop-down menu or scroll through the records one by one using the Previous or Next buttons. Records can be also be tagged (see above section).

Click on Latest Results List to return to the results page of your latest search.

Records include all indexing and geographic terms including their hierarchical structures. If you click on any of these terms it will create a list of all records in which it occurs. Please note that if you create a new list by clicking on a term, this will now become the latest list.