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General search approach
The consultation is based on three types of search: a simple search, an advanced search and an expert search. A simple search allows you to input one or more key words. In general, and particularly if this yields too few or no documents, we recommend that you should use an advanced search: you enter one or more of the search criteria from the list proposed, which will automatically be linked by the operator AND. If your search strategy is limited, you can use an expert search: here you freely choose the criteria, their values, and the linking operator (AND or OR).
Specific principles of a simple search
Handling non-signifying words, upper case, lower case, accents:
The search engine ignores accents, non-signifying words (the, of ….), and more generally words consisting of three letters or less. It does not recognize operators written in the entry zone (AND, OR, EXCEPT). Finally, it does not distinguish between upper and lower case.
Handling synonyms, declinations and flexed forms:
In order to optimize keyword searches, a lexicon has been compiled so that the search engine recognizes synonyms for some of the indexing criteria and derivations (steel-steelworks) of the search criteria. For flexed forms (masculine/feminine, singular/plural), DELAF lexicon under LGPLLR licence was used (Equipe
informatique Linguistique, Institut Gaspard Monge, CNRS).
These principles are also used for searching by keywords in the help provided for consulting the thesaurus.
Handling the descendant terms of the search criteria
The search engine displays in the results the documents that have been indexed by the descender terms of the search criteria.
What is a descendant term?
Example of the thesaurus for asbestos containing materials (ACM) (Asbestos document database)
| 100-Friction lining |
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| 200-Acoustic and fireproof insulation (building)
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210-More or less friable sprayed material
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Descendant Level 1
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211-Sprayed material for walls and ceilings
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Descendant Level 2
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212-Sprayed material for building frames
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Descendant Level 2
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220- Under-ceiling panels
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Descendant Level 1
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230- Fireproof walls, panels and doors
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Descendant Level 1
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| 300- Asbestos-cement building material
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…
Descendant terms are more precise, and make it possible to add an extra level of detail. Thus, for search criterion 200 - Acoustic and fireproof insulation (building), the engine will find the records indexed by this code, and by its descendants: 210, 211, 212, 220 and 230.
Using the magnifying lens
The magnifying lens is used to access help for consulting the thesaurus. There are two possible ways to search for a term: i) free input of keywords, ii) exploration of the whole thesaurus.