BBIH Help - Table of contents 11. Help for users familiar with the RHS Bibliography

1. What has happened to the Quick search option?
The quick search option formerly on the RHS Bibliography home page is now performed by the Search box at the top-right of the BBIH screen. Text that you enter here is searched for anywhere in BBIH. This differs slightly from the RHS Bibliography because publishers and places of publication are included in the search. Also, you can now use Boolean operators in this field: learn more.

2. What has happened to the Full search option?
Full search has no direct equivalent on BBIH, but all of its features can be found on the Advanced search tab of BBIH.

3. Can I still restrict my search to newly added records?
This is no longer possible, but newly added records are now indicated in the result overview.

4. How do I confine my search to records about Ireland, London or Scotland?
The RHS Bibliography search menu options to limit your search to these areas are no longer available. However, you can limit your search to these areas by selecting the Advanced search tab; then click on All places next to Place name tree in the Subject search section. In the box next to Search in tree , type Ireland or London or Scotland as appropriate. Click on Search in tree and tick the checkbox next to 'Ireland', 'London' or 'Scotland' as appropriate in the list of results. Click Insert/close . You can then insert your other search criteria in the other fields. You can also learn more about the Place name tree .

A quick alternative is to use All index terms on either Simple search or Advanced search . Enter Ireland, London or Scotland here. Some extraneous results will be returned (for example records dealing with William Henry Ireland, or with Jack London, or with 'Scottish people outside Scotland'), but the results will be very similar to using the Place index.

5. How do I find records about Imperial and Commonwealth history?
We have transferred the Imperial and Commonwealth topic from the geographical indexing scheme to the subject tree. Select the Advanced search tab; then click on All subjects next to Subject tree in the Subject search section. 'Imperial and Commonwealth' should now appear in the list of top-level subjects to the left of the screen. Tick the checkbox next to 'Imperial and Commonwealth' and then click Insert/close . If you wish to look for more specific terms on Imperial and Commonwealth history, click on the 'Imperial and Commonwealth' term and the next level of the tree will be displayed.

You can also learn more about the Subject tree.

6. Why does Search anywhere return more results than the RHS Bibliography Simple search ?
The RHS Bibliography Simple search searched most areas of the records but excluded some fields, such as publisher and place of publication. Search anywhere searches all areas of the records, including publishers' names and places of publication, so a search term which matches a publisher's name, or a place of publication, will produce more results.

7. Words and phrases
When you enter multiple words into a search box you can now enclose them in inverted commas so that they will be searched for as a phrase. Learn more.

8. Use AND, OR, NOT as Boolean operators within fields
Learn more.

9. Truncation and wildcards
On the RHS Bibliography, wildcards were added to your search by default on the Simple search and Full search forms. This meant that any text that you entered was matched to words beginning with that text; for example, a serch for agricultur would match both 'agriculture' and 'agricultural'. On the Search builder, you could use drop down menus to switch truncation off.

On BBIH, the default is no truncation. To match plurals and different word endings, you must add * to your search text, e.g. search for agricultur* in order to match both 'agriculture' and 'agricultural'.

Additionally, you can use ? to represent a single character, e.g. p?rsons will match 'persons' or 'parsons'. However, a character must be present where you place the ?: e.g. guild? will match 'guilds' but will not match 'guild'. To search for both single and plural forms of a word, add *, e.g. guild*.

The text that you enter in a search box must contain at least three characters, as well as the * or ?.

10. Using the same field more than once in your search
You cannot repeat the same field on the screen as was possible in the RHS Bibliography Search builder. However, you can use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) within a single field to search for multiple terms (learn more about Boolean operators). You do not have to enter the operators in capitals, but they are shown in capitals here for clarity.

For example, enter Richardson AND Sayles in the author field to find works by authors whose names contain both 'Richardson' and 'Sayles'.

Or you can search for multiple phrases, separating them with AND, OR or NOT, to get more precise results, e.g. searching for

"Gordon Bruce" AND "Marshall Peter"

will return more precise results for works written by Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall than Gordon AND Marshall which will include a work by the author, Gordon Marshall.

You can combine different operators in one text box and you can also use brackets to control how they work: learn more.