What type of search to choose
Simple searches are good for casting a broad net for a word or term.
With common words, this sort of searching may find a very large
number of returns, showing the word in a variety of contexts which
may or may not be helpful. Searching for the word eye, for example,
will bring up hits on expressions like in the eye of the beholder
as well as extended discussions in anatomy texts of how the eye
functions. You may then wish to modify your search to find only
those places where your term turns up as a subject of discussion,
rather than in an offhanded way. You can do this by selecting the
"work and section titles" option in the basic search
drop-down menu, or by doing a Boolean or proximity search.
Boolean searches allow you to combine up to three search terms
and look for them in the same work or work sub-sections.
Proximity searches look for the co-occurrence of search terms.
This allows you to specify the physical relationship between the
words you are looking for -- so you can look for words following
each other or near each other. You can also choose the "not
near" option from the drop down menu to look for situations
where words appear without being associated with another word. You
can use this to look for occurrences in which India is discussed without
the mention of the spices that were so much the focus of early trade.
Related topics:
Simple search
Boolean search
Proximity search
Searching regions
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