Full Text Search

The Full Text search is a free format search facility which enables all of the fields in the records to be searched, such as notes, occupation, dates, plus all of the names on the record. The “Full Text Search” facility allows the use of operators to customise the search.

• e.g. :     ‘+Mary +Kelly +Ballinasloe’

This will retrieve all of the records containing “Mary” and “Kelly” and “Ballinasloe”.

 

Search Operators

The following operators can be used :

•   +    means AND e.g. ‘+Mary +Kelly’
•   –     means NOT e.g. ‘+Mary +Kelly -Ryan’
•   *     wildcard or truncation operator (to be used at the end of a word only)  e.g. ‘Marg*’
•   ( )   parentheses group words into subexpressions and can be used to include variants e.g. ‘(Bridget Brigid)’
•   ”     match a phrase enclosed within double quotes e.g. ‘”School Teacher”‘
•   ~    (tilde) negation operator

 

AND Operator ‘+’

Use the AND operator ‘+’ to retrieve records that contain all of the search words. As this is the default behaviour, you can omit the ‘+’ .

• e.g.  :    ‘+Mary +Kelly + Ballinasloe’

This will retrieve all of the records containing “Mary” and “Kelly” and “Ballinasloe”.

 

NOT Operator ‘-‘

Use the NOT operator ‘-‘ to exclude records from your search results

• e.g.     ‘+Mary +Kelly -Sullivan’

This will retrieve all of the records containing “Mary” and “Kelly” but not containing “Sullivan”.

 

Wildcard ‘*’

The wildcard or truncation operator ‘*’ can be used at the end of a word

• e.g.    ‘Marg* Sullivan’

This will retrieve records containing variants of ‘Margaret’, that start with ‘Marg’, and also contain ‘Sullivan’.

 

Use Parentheses to Match Variants

To add variants to a search, variants can be enclosed in parentheses, separated by spaces.

To include surname variants in your search such as Burke and Bourke:

• e.g.     ‘Mary (Burke Bourke)’

The firstname variants for Elizabeth:

• e.g.     ‘(Elizabeth Lizzie Liz) Murphy’

 

Match a Phrase with Double Quotes 

You can match a phrase by enclosing the phrase within double quotes.

• e.g.     ‘“School Teacher”‘

Or this could also be used to retrieve a specific person. Names in the full text system start with firstname and then surname, so the search needs to be in that order too:

• e.g.    ‘”Margaret Reilly”‘

 

Standard Surnames Not Supported

Standard surnames are not supported, however…

• You can use a wildcard ‘*’ at the end of a surname or other term e.g. ‘Connel*’
• You can also list variants within parentheses e.g. ‘(Burke Bourke)’

 

Specific Date Search

To search for a specific date you need to use the format YYYYMMDD, so for example to search for 23rd May 1887 you would use:

•  e.g.    ‘18870523’

The month and day need to be zero padded so that for 1st Febuary 1877 you would use : ‘18770201’

 

Month Search

The full text search allows you to search for a particular month with the correct operator. Bear in mind the dates are in the format YYYYMMDD…

So to search for a specific month you need to use the format ‘YYYYMM*’,  with a wildcard at the end. For example to search for May 1887 you would use:

•  e.g.    ‘188705*’

The wildcard is required at the end. The month must be zero padded so use ’05’ for May and not ‘5’.

 

Year Search

The full text search allows searching by year as follows:

•  e.g.    ‘Elizabeth Conner 1887’

 

Use OR instead of AND between Words

If you don’t like the default search mechanism, which uses ANDs between words, and you would prefer to have ORs between words, then you can achieve this by enclosing all of your search terms within parenthesis:

• e.g.    ‘(Elizabeth John Conner Kelly Ballina 1840)’

This will return records containing ‘Elizabeth’ OR ‘John’ OR ‘Conner’ OR ‘Kelly’ OR ‘Ballina’ OR ‘1840’.

This allows you to retrieve records that may not contain all of the search terms, so if you use a spelling that is different than what is in the record, then you may still retrieve the record.

The results should be returned in order of closeness of match, so that the best matches are at the top of the search results.

 

How to find the Full Text Search

The full text search is only available on the county or center sub-domains and is not available as an all-Ireland search. So to access the full text search, follow these steps:

• Choose a county or centre from the ‘Search By County’ drop-down menu
• Then from the ‘Search’ menu choose ‘Full Text Search’ at the bottom of the list

 

Short Words and Phrases not Indexed

Short words (less than 4 characters) are not indexed.