Last Updated: Wednesday, 16 January 2013, 07:44 GMT

Search Tips

You can find documents in Refworld by either searching or browsing. Each method has its advantages, depending on what you are looking for.

Searching

If you are looking for a specific document, searching can help you find it fast. When you search in Refworld, you can enter two or three search terms about the item into the basic search box, and you receive search results that match those words. Searching also offers sophisticated options that allow you to narrow your search in a variety of ways, with the most powerful options reserved for the advanced search page.

Be as specific as you can when you are searching for documents, use specific words instead of general ones. Enter words that you think will appear in the documents you want. Refworld indexes all of the words on each Web page.

To search for documents where two or more keywords are present, enter the keywords with a space between them
To search for documents containing certain words in a particular order, place double quotation marks around the group of words. (Example: "international protection"). Do not use single quotes in your query as this will generate no results.
To search for documents that don't contain certain words, place a minus sign immediately before the word to be excluded (no space after the minus sign) (Example: -uighurs )
To search for documents that don't contain several words, Place a minus sign before the list of words separated by commas (with no spaces after the minus sign and the commas) and put in parentheses (Example: -(iran,kurds) )
To search for documents where one word or another is present, enter keywords in parentheses separated by commas (no space after the commas) (Example: (fergana,ferghana) )
To search for documents that contain words starting with a particular sequence of letters, enter the letter sequence followed by an asterisk. The * (asterisk) may be used to match just the prefix of a word or to ignore the middle of something. (Example: Search for the term ref* to find refuge, refugee, refer or, a search for deport*order will result in documents with the terms "deportee with a copy of his or her order" and "deportation orders")

Browsing

If you are not sure what you are looking for, or if you want to scroll through items, browsing is an excellent way to become acquainted with the rich content of Refworld. When you browse in Refworld, you click through categories, topics, publishers or types of documents until you find a document or set of documents that meet your needs. Browsing on Refworld can sometimes be overwhelming due to the large number of items found. You can further reduce the number of documents in your browse results by using tabs or the filter feature.

Filtering Results

Using the filter bar that appears above document listing in the search and browse modes, you may further refine your results. Currently, it is possible to filter by document title, year and the document text (fulltext). Additional options include modifying the number of results per page and ordering results by date or relevance. To return to the full set of documents, simply remove any text from the filter box and click on the "Go" button.

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