Our family history website has more than 500 pages of old letters, photos, news clips, family records, etc. But sometimes it can seem "an embarrassment of riches." How can you find the items you'd like to see? Especially when you don't know what's there?
There is a menu on the left side. And some of the items listed are tables of contents to sections of it. But unlike a book, it doesn't have an overall table of contents.
Like most websites, this one is indexed by the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. So you can search for its pages the way you search any website. But those tools search millions of web sites, and list hits from the most popular websites first, so you may see results from countless other web sites at the top of your list of "hits." Moreover they apparently only index it once a month, so there is a lag between when we add or modify a web page and when they will "discover" the change.
Even worse, they can only search the words that appear on the web pages. For example a letter may sometimes refer to say, Elisha Shore Horton, as father, Lish or E. S. Horton. The word matching algorithms of the major search engines can easily miss the document you are looking for. And, if you search for father you'd be inundated by millions of hits.
Fortunately there's an alternative, a tool that searches only this site. Searching a single site is much faster than searching the entire web. The search engine we're using, FreeFind, indexes our site at least weekly, rather than only monthly. Even more important, it can search not only on words that occur in the document, but on index terms (keywords) that have been added by volunteers. (That's one of the areas we're looking for help with.)
[In this page 1 of a "users manual", guidebook, tutorial or whatever you want to call it, I will try to present the basics of searching our website. Page 2 will cover "the bells and whistles" and page 3 will be case studies of actual searches by users.]
The search window is located at the upper left of our website's home
page. Looking at it you will see a link, search tips,
followed by another link, advanced search. Below them is the
search box, followed by a button labeled search. First we'll
discuss the mechanics of how they work (which most of you can figure out
from clicking on the search
tips button, most of which is discussed below) -- followed by
search strategies well suited to this site. (If
you feel like you have plenty of experience doing searches you may
want to skip ahead to the "Smart Searching" section.)
FUNDAMENTALS. You can type one or more words (or even just strings of characters)and click on the button. If you type cat and click, it will give you a list of all the web pages on this site that contain the word 'cat'. If you type in cat dog pig, it will give you a list of all the web pages that contain the word 'cat', or the word 'dog', or the word 'pig'.
Suppose we want to see just those pages that only contain the phrase Elisha Horton, not just all that contain 'Elisha' and all containing 'Horton'. To do that enter "Elisha Horton", enclosed in quotes, into the search box.
A character in the play Music Man proclaimed "Ya gotta know the territory." Obviously knowing what's on the site isn't a prerequisite for searching the site. But familiarity with the way the writers of the documents expressed themselves helps. For example, if you read a lot of the documents on this site you'll see that men often used initials instead of first and middle names. "T. C. Campbell", "M. B. Seely", "J. Edward Hazlett", etc. So, a search for "Thomas Campbell" or "Mark Seely" or "James Hazlett" will miss those documents.
Name Flipping/omitting: You also have a better chance of finding the document you want if you realize that in those days it was common for someone to "flip" their first and last names -- "Phoebe Jessica Hoyt" became "Jessica Phoebe Hoyt"; "Thomas Edgar Congdon" became "Edgar Thomas Congdon", etc. Searchers need to be flexible and search multiple ways. Or, especially with women, sometimes drop their first name entirely.
Spelling Variations: Spelling rules weren't rigid. Phebe (Campbell) Hoyt always spelled her given name without the 'o'. If you only search for Phoebe you'll miss a lot of web pages [unless indexing volunteers come to your rescue]. Many names have variant spellings: Green/Greene, Seely/Seeley, Mourie/Mourey/Mowrey, Haslet/Hazelett/Hazels/Hazlett. Even Johnson/Yonson.
But those problems almost disappear for our web pages that have been indexed by a volunteer. Our site's search engine, FreeFind, can recognize index terms that have been added to a document. When it's not clear who a document is referring to, we've added links that make it clear to human readers who is being talked about. But the contents of the links isn't accessible by search engines -- they only "see" words that occur in the document. If a document mentions "Lish", a volunteer indexing the webpage can add "Elisha Horton" as a keyword. [The indexer knows his name because they can click on the link.] If the document mentions "Aunt Jane", thanks to the link, the indexer can add "Jane Campbell Tubbs" and "Jane Tubbs" as keywords. The trick is to think "if someone wants to find this document, what words need to be added in order for FreeFind to find it. Volunteer indexers ask themselves, "What search terms would someone looking for this document use?" Many of our webpages have been indexed, but most have not. Volunteers who index our web pages greatly improve the chances of a searcher's success.
Our webmaster gets reports from FreeFind about the searches that are made. Not who was searching, but the search terms used and a link to the "hits" found by each search. So we gain some insights into what search strategies work and which ones don't work. Of course we can't read the searcher's mind and know for sure what he/she had in mind. But we can see, and infer, a lot.
SEARCHING for LIVING PEOPLE. Except in a few cases, such as minutes or programs of recent Campbell Reunions, living people aren't mentioned on these web pages. [Our Facebook pages or YouTube pages provide better hunting for them.]
OR, AND, Phrases. OR is the default. For instance, entering robert lugg in the search box will search our site for all pages that contain the word 'Robert' or the word 'Lugg'. Which is fine if that's what you intended -- but "OR" searches can produce a VERY long hit list. If you wanted all the web pages that contained the word 'Robert' and also the word 'Lugg' you could use the plus sign. E.g. by typing +robert +lugg in the search box.
Phrases are the technique to use if word order matters. If you're looking for occurrences the word 'robert' immediately followed by the word 'lugg', then type "robert lugg" in the search box. But those searches look for exact matches -- they wouldn't find occurrences of 'Robert P. Lugg' or of 'Robert S. Lugg'. Typing "robert p. lugg" into the search block would find the former and "robert s. lugg" would find the second. Or, we could find both in one search by using the wildcard symbol ? to stand for any character. Entering "robert ?. lugg" into the search box would find both the 'p' version and the 's' version in one search.
Ending a search word with a wild card. FreeFind by default finds variations of an English language "word root." If you search for 'climb' it will retrieve 'climbs', 'climbed' and 'climbing'. And if you search for 'Green' it will retrieve 'Greene' as well. The ? wildcard only works for a single character in fixed position in a word -- being the nth character. So, if you want to search for both 'Seely' and 'Seeley' it's no help. But there's a different wild card symbol you use at the end of a word that can match any number of characters. Entering seel* into the search box will find both 'Seely' and 'Seeley'.
That's a lot to absorb in one setting. But the more searches you do, the better you'll become at it.
Learn more features of FreeFind on this guide's 2nd page, "Bells and Whistles". And/or read about actual searches visitors made and how they could have been done more successfully on this guide's 3rd page, "Case Studies".
Want to take a quiz? Click HERE.
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