How to use the Search

AND

When searching HeRMIS, AND is not needed, which means you do not need to include it when typing in search words or terms. All the words you enter into a search field will be searched as if AND has been placed between them. For example, Edmonton Calgary highway will return results that include all your search terms in one or more fields within the same object. The closer the words are to each other, the more relevant the search results will be.

When using the advanced search, and entering search terms in more than one search field, the default operator is (AND). For example, a search for aberhart in the "title" field and a search for fonds in the "object level" field, return the William Aberhart fonds.

OR

Using OR in a search expands you search results by searching both terms. For example finance OR treasury will yield search results, sorted by relevancy, for both finance and for treasury.

NOT (-)

To exclude words when searching, type a space and a minus sign ( - ) directly in front of the word that you do not want in your search results. For example, to bring up records related to William Aberhart, but NOT Ernest Manning, search for William Aberhart -Manning. As the search returns results by relevancy, you may receive some hits with your search term in the results. These should however, be near the bottom of the search results.

Exact Phrase Search (" ")

To search for a phrase or words adjacent to each other, use quotation marks (" "). An example is "Jasper highway". However, using the exact phrase means you miss the records with both jasper and highway nearby each other, for example, objects describing, Highway 16, Hinton to Jasper Place.

Wildcard Search (*)

You can truncate your search using an asterisk (*). This will return words that have a common start or ending. For example: Entering home* will match home, homestead, homesteader, home and school, etc.

Creation Year Search

Date search fields can be used to find items from a specific year or a range of years. The query 1985 will return all items from 1985. The query <1985 will return all items created prior to 1985. The query >1985 will return all items created up to 1985. The query 1980-1989 will return all items created between 1980 and 1989.