Odysseia-Help

How to search

The main window is divided into two parts. On the left you can see imagemap of Europe. Every country is active and you can select the country of your interest by clicking it. This gives you direct access to references of the country.

On the right you can see three query boxes: search all; towns and regions and descriptors. In "search all" box you can target your search to only one field (e.g. LA=eng) or search from all the fields. Also boolean operators AND, OR, NOT are in use. In "towns, regions" box you can type in the area of country you want to find information of. To find out the correct spelling use browse button. "Descriptors" box is used for searching different issues but the words must be in thesaurus.

Below the query boxes are two buttons, "search" and "browse". "Search" means that only the references matching your query are shown whereas "browse" shows the matching terms and other index terms near it.

After you have typed your query in one of the query boxes you must press either "search" or "browse" before your query will be processed.

Query language

You can use boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) in your query. AND means that the words you're looking for must all exist in the documents found. OR means that one of the words must exist and NOT that words given must not exist. You can use $ as variable to truncate your search words. For example, if you want to find info on castles and fortresses but not battles (ie. peaceful history of castles) you'd make query "castle$ AND fortres$ NOT battle$".

Query example

You want to find all the documents with information of cathedrals. This is typical case where you can succesfully use descriptors. First use Odysseia Thesaurus to find the correct term, which is "churches". Type in the word in "descriptors" box and press "browse" or "search", depending whether you want to see only documents containing descriptor "castles" or also other documents close to matching.

Structure

Record	Abbreviation	Description
Country	CO	The country described in the document
Title	TI	Title of the document
URL	URL	Uniform resource locator of the page
Responsibility	RES	Organization or person responsible of the page
Language	LA	Languages used in the document
Form	FO	Form of the document
Update	UD	The last date of update if available
Annotations	ANN	Special annotations of the document
Search	SE	The search possibilities in the document
Regions	REG	The most important areas covered
Descriptors	DE	Descriptor terms
Abstract	AB	Abstract of the document

Example record

CO=		Finland

TI=		STN-Matkaopas

URL=		http://www.stn.fi/english

RES=		STN & Jiop Oy

LA=		fin
		ger
		eng
		swe

FO=		large, maps, pictures, statistics

UD=	

ANN=	

SE=		interactive map
		links
		menu

REG=		Aland
		Capital area
		Carelia
		Hame
		Kainuu
		Lappland
		Pohjanmaa
		Savo
		Uusimaa

DE=		accomodation
		events
		galleries
		general information
		holidays
		hotels
		monuments
		museums
		tourist offices

AB=		The document contains statistical 
		information of Finland and more 
		detailed information of major cities,
		towns and tourist attractions. User 
		can search information using online 
		search and pulldown menus. The 
		document contains also up-to-date 
		information on opening hours of 
		museums and other sights.