A query is broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: Single Terms and Phrases.

• A Single Term is a single word such as "ives" or "crumb"

• A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as "string quartet"

• Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query (see below)

Lucene supports fielded searches. When performing a search you can specify a field or use a default field from the pulldown menu. You can also combine fields by specifying one field and combining it with a default pulldown field.

You can search any field by typing the field name followed by a colon ":" and then the term you are looking for. Example:

    title:"string quartet" AND ives [where default field on the pulldown is "composer"]

Lucene supports modifying query terms to provide a wide range of searching options.

Wildcard Searches

Lucene supports single and multiple character wildcard searches within single terms (not within phrase queries).

To perform a single character wildcard search use the "?" symbol.

To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the "*" symbol.

The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced. For example, to search for "John" or "Joan", you can use the search:

    Jo?n

Multiple character wildcard searches looks for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for "violin", "violins", "violinist" or "violinists", you can use the search:

    violin*

You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term.

    wom*n

Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.

Proximity Searches

Lucene supports finding words are a within a specific distance away. To do a proximity search use the tilde, "~", symbol at the end of a phrase. For example, to search for a "sonata" and "adagio" within 10 words of each other, use the search:

    "sonata adagio"~10

Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. Lucene supports AND, "+", OR, NOT and "-" as Boolean operators (Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS).

The OR operator is the default conjunction operator. This means that if there is no Boolean operator between two terms, the OR operator is used. The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document. This is equivalent to a union using sets. The symbol || can be used in place of the word OR.

To search for documents that contain either "string quartet" or just "quartet" use the query:

    "string quartet" quartet

or

    "string quartet" OR quartet

AND

The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. This is equivalent to an intersection using sets. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND.

To search for documents that contain "string quartet" and "violin", use the query:

    "string quartet" AND violin

+

The "+" or required operator requires that the term after the "+" symbol exist somewhere in a the field of a single document.

To search for documents that must contain "quartet" and may contain "string" use the query:

    +quartet string

NOT

The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. This is equivalent to a difference using sets. The symbol ! can be used in place of the word NOT.

To search for documents that contain "string quartet" but not "ives" as a composer, use the query:

    title:"string quartet" NOT ives

[Note: with pulldown menu set to "Composer"]

The NOT operator cannot be used with just one term. For example, the following search will return no results:

    NOT "string quartet"

-

The "-" or prohibit operator excludes documents that contain the term after the "-" symbol.

To search for documents that contain "string quartet" but not "adagio", use the query:

    "string quartet" -adagio

Lucene supports using parentheses to group clauses to form sub queries. This can be very useful if you want to control the Boolean logic for a query.

To search for either "live" or "electronic" and "music", use the query:

    (live OR electronic) AND music

Lucene supports using parentheses to group multiple clauses to a single field.

To search for a title that contains both the word "adagio" and the phrase "string quartet", use the query:

    title:(+adagio +"string quartet")

Lucene supports escaping special characters that are part of the query syntax. The current list special characters are

    + - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : 

To escape these character use the before the character. For example to search for (1+1):2 use the query:

    (1+1):2