Search the Guide

Type one or more search terms into the search box and click on the search button.

The search engine does not distinguish between lowercase and uppercase letters.

A results page will be produced: a list of web pages related to your search terms, with the most relevant page appearing first, then the next, and so on.

Boolean operators
The operator AND is set as default between words. You can combine several words or phrases by using the logical operators OR and AND.

You can also use plus or minus marks for including or excluding words (see below).

Ranking
The more of the words that are present in the page, the higher is the score.

If words appear in the same order as in your query, and close to each other, the score of the document gets high.

Phrase Search
Use quotation marks to compound phrases. If you wish to search for a phrase, you write text inside "…" quotation marks.

Eg. "African studies"

Truncation
Use * for truncation of search terms. A search term does not always have to be entered in its complete form. Search terms may be truncated from left or right.

Eg. Tanza* or even *anza*

Prioritizing Words
Plus marks a word as necessary. By preceding a word or a phrase with a plus sign, you tell the search engine that you are only looking for documents that contain that word/phrase.

Eg. +policy +activities

Word Exclusion
Minus marks a word as not wanted. By preceding a word or phrase with a minus sign, you tell the search engine to exclude that word/phrase and only to look for documents that match the rest of the query.

Eg. nordic -africa –institute