Help with Searching the APWU Website

 

The APWU website can be searched using either standard search or advanced search.

 

Standard Search

 

In the standard search, a search box appears at the top of each page. You can enter keywords or phrases into the box and click “Go” to obtain search results in a numbered list. Results can be narrowed using the Section pull‑down menu. When the pull‑down menu is used, only that section will be searched and all other results ignored.

 

The standard search box supports the use of keywords (the specific word you are looking for in a document), phrase searching (phrases must be enclosed within quotation marks), as well as the use of “connectors” (AND, OR, & AND NOT).

 

You can also perform “fuzzy” searches using characters such as an asterisk (*) which substitutes for an unlimited number of characters, or a question mark (?) which substitutes for a single character. You can also use multiple questions marks to substitute for a specific number of characters. See the examples below.

 

In the case of a badly formed query you may receive an error message. If this happens, reformulate your search and try again, keeping these rules in mind.

 

Examples of Search Queries

 

Simple search using connectors:

 

subcontracting AND maintenance

subcontracting AND NOT maintenance

 

Note: In these examples, connectors are in all upper case for clarity. Actual searches are not case-sensitive.

 

Phrase search with connectors:

 

“higher level” AND NOT holiday

 

Fuzzy search:

 

Subcontract* (returns documents that include the word subcontract, subcontracts, subcontracted, subcontracting, subcontractor, etc.)

 

Subcontract?? (returns documents that include the word subcontracted and subcontractor. Note: each question mark functions as a substitute for a single character)

 

 

 

Advanced Search

 

Advanced search works the same as standard search except that you can further restrict your search by type of document and by date. For example, if you know you are looking for a PDF, you can restrict your search to PDF Documents only, thereby removing HTML Documents from your results list. When you select a document type in Advanced Search, only documents of that type will be returned in the search results. You can choose between HTML Documents and PDF Documents.

 

Date‑Based Screening

 

Date screening allows a user to select documents that have been modified between certain dates. Order is important; the start date must precede the end date. Keep in mind that date-based screening is based on the web document’s modification date, not necessarily the date of the original document. This is an important distinction, as date screening will return results based on the date the article or document was posted to the site, not necessarily the date of the original document. Date screening is most useful for documents created after the new APWU website became operational, i.e. Aug. 16, 2004. For documents created after that date, the document date and the posting date should, in most cases, be fairly close.

 

Note that you must include a start date and an end date when performing date restricted searches. If you include one without the other, this feature will not work.

 

When the advanced search is used, the search criteria will be retained when search results appear. This enables the user to modify the search parameters to fine tune the query.

 

 

Using the Search Results Page

 

Search results are sorted by relevance, from most to least relevant, as calculated by the search engine. Relevance is generally determined by the how frequently the search term appears in the document.

 

The results list includes the document title (if applicable), a snippet of relevant content from the file, the name of the file, a link to the document and a posting date.

 

The number of returned items is limited to 10,000 results.