3. Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII)

The Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) <http://www.austlii.edu.au/> is a joint facility of the Faculties of Law of the University of Technology, Sydney, and the University of New South Wales established in 1995. It has a small full-time staff, plus two part-time Co-Directors. AustLII is funded by grants from public bodies and private organisations that are ‘stakeholders’ in free dissemination of particular classes of legal information. Access to AustLII’s web resources is free, and is not funded by advertising.

AustLII publishes public legal information; that is primary legal materials (legislation, treaties and decisions of courts and tribunals); and secondary legal materials created by public bodies for purposes of public access (law reform and royal commission reports etc). AustLII's policy agenda is to convince parliaments, governments, courts, law reform bodies and other public institutions to make legal materials they control available free via the Internet.

AustLII’s web service comprises (as at February 2002) close to one million pages of HTML. These pages contain over 22 million hypertext links, mainly to other resources within the AustLII site. There are over 171,000 decisions of Courts and Tribunals on the system, and over 747,400 sections of legislation, plus 42,000 other pages of secondary materials.

3.2. Primary legal materials on AustLII

AustLII’s current (February 2002) primary materials databases are as set out below.

3.2.1. Legislation

AustLII’s Australian legislation collection is at present one of the largest on the web.

AustLII receives legislative data via the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s SCALE service as well as data direct from the Offices of Parliamentary Counsel and other Departments in some jurisdictions.

3.2.2. Commonwealth courts and tribunals - decisions

3.2.3. State and Territory Courts and Tribunals

Supreme Court of the Northern Territory - Court of Criminal Appeal Decisions 2000-

These case law databases comprise all Commonwealth Courts and the most significant Commonwealth tribunals, as well as a large selection of State and Territory case law. The historical sets of case law on AustLII are in most cases due to it receiving these back sets from the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s SCALE service. Since January 1997 SCALE is available on the internet as SCALEplus - see the Chapter in this Guide. SCALE’s service to the Australian community in developing and preserving in public hands an electronic archive of Australian case law (principally Commonwealth materials) has been a very important factor in AustLII’s establishment. AustLII now receives the data to update the majority of these case-law databases directly from the Courts and Tribunals concerned.

3.2.4. Other primary materials databases

AustLII also has a number of other databases of types of primary materials more difficult to classify: treaties and other international agreements; official decisions of agencies; and decisions of non-government organisations which nevertheless have an authoritative ‘industry’ status:

3.3. Accessing AustLII’s databases - menus

From ‘View All Databases’ on the front page of AustLII, the following menu structure is accessed. The databases on AustLII are listed by jurisdiction and then by specific subjects and organisations’ home pages.

3.3.1. Primary materials database title pages

Each primary materials database, when browsed to, has a title page such as that shown below for the NSW Consolidated legislation database.

The database title page will normally provide facilities to browse and search the database (discussed later in relation to case law and legislation), information about currency of the database, information about the source of the database, information about how its inclusion on AustLII has been funded, and any disclaimers.

3.4. Searching AustLII

SINO ('size is no object') is AustLII's search engine, written by Andrew Mowbray. It is a free text retrieval engine with the normal boolean and proximity search operators. SINO also incorporates relevance ranking.

3.4.1. The SINO search engine - introduction

This part describes SINO’s boolean and proximity searching. SINO documentation is at <http://www.austlii.edu.au/help/sino_full.html>.

SINO emulations of other common search languages

The SINO search language is rather cosmopolitan in that it emulates most of the search features of other search languages familiar to Australian lawyers. Most of the search connectors and other aspects of search syntax used by Lexis, DiskROM, Status databases such as the old SCALE systems, the old Info-One on-line system, the old LawPac CD-ROMs, (and for the non-lawyers, even C and agrep) are recognised by SINO.

If you are familiar with any of these retrieval systems you should look at the ‘Summary of SINO operators’ below, and the relevant emulation details in the Appendix to this Chapter, ‘SINO search language emulations’.

The SINO search interface

AustLII provides two search forms: (i) Standard (accessed from front page) and (ii) Full (allows more database combinations)

(i) Standard search form

SINO’s standard search form is accessed from the front page of AustLII. It provides predefined search methods to assist casual users of the website.

(ii) Full search form

The full search form allows any combination of AustLII databases to be selected. The search scope options are the same as those found on the standard search form.

The standard search interface is shown below. It is fairly simple. Search terms and operators are entered in the ‘Search Terms’ window. You can then just click on the ‘Search’ button to start the search. The use of the other windows is explained below.

‘any of these words’:	return documents that contain any or all of the terms entered
‘all of these words’:	all terms entered are to be present in the document returned
‘this phrase’:	exact match of the phrase entered
‘this document title’:	limit search scope to the title of documents
‘this Boolean query’:	allows for more sophisticated search queries using Boolean and proximity operators

For inexperience users, it means that in order to conduct search, only a few keywords need to be entered into the search term windows and then clicking on the ‘Search’ button to start the search process. The default option is ‘any of these words’ and the default search scope is over all ‘AustLII databases’. The relevance ranking mechanism assists the user in sorting out the relevant results.

Note: You need to select ‘this Boolean query’ before conducting boolean and proximity searching as shown below.

SINO search basics

When you do a SINO search, you are searching for documents that contain some words or phrases. If you can think of a phrase that is distinctive enough, just type it in and hit the return key! If you need to find documents containing more than a single word or phrase, things get a little (but not a lot) more complicated.

If you want more than one phrase or word to appear in the retrieved documents, put an and between them. For example, to find documents containing the phrase moral rights as well as the word copyright, you would type: moral rights and copyright .

If, on the other hand, you want to find one term and/or another one, put an or between them. For example, to find material that contains the words treaty, convention or international agreement, you would search for: treaty or convention or international agreement. If you wanted to, you could even put these two searches together - as in: treaty or convention or international agreement and moral rights and copyright.

If you want to find two words or phrases which appear close to each other (for example, the parties to a case), you can use the near connector. If you wanted to find cases where Smith sued (or was sued by) Brown, you might type: smith near brown.

Summary of search operators

These operators are described in more detail below. All operators may be used in any combinations irrespective of any other search systems they may emulate.

In the following table, ‘term’ includes words, truncated words, and phrases; and ‘n’ signifies a number.

Type	Operator	Explanation
Plurals		automatic search for regular English plurals
Truncation	term*	matches any string following truncated term (including none)
	term?	matches any single character following truncated term
Boolean	and	page contains both terms (alternative operator: ‘+’)
	or	page contains either of two terms (alternative operator: ‘,’)
	not	page contains first term but not the second (alternative operator: ‘-’)
Proximity	near	first term is within 50 words of second term
	w/n	first term is within n words of second term (alternative operator: ‘/n/’)
	pre/n	first term must precede second term by less than n words
		‘Same paragraph’ operators like ‘//’ are not supported.
Segments	*title(term)*	term is found in page title (alternative operator: ‘@title’)
	*text(term)*	term is found in page text, not only in page title (alternative operator: ‘term @ text’)
Literals	“operator”	Double quotes around “and”, “not”, “or”, “near” etc mean that these words do not act as operators but act as search terms
Precedence	( )	use parentheses to change order of evaluation of operators (alternative operators: ‘[ ]’, ‘{ }’)

Words and phrases may be connected together with boolean and proximity operators to form more complex searches. The operators are borrowed from a number of existing free text retrieval systems. They may be used in any combination and regardless of their heritage.

3.4.2. Words and phrases - what is searchable

The basic unit of a SINO search is the word. A word is any continuous sequence of alphanumeric characters. Words are case insensitive. Words may be combined into phrases without the need for any special connectors (eg. "pervert the course of justice"), and without the need for quotes around phrases.

Non-searchable words and characters

All words are searchable other than a relatively small list of common words which is specified for each database. The list of non-searchable common words is typically quite small (less than 100 words) and is generally limited to words of little informational content (such as “the”, "is", "but" and so forth).

Plurals

SINO automatically expands searches to match regular English plurals (that is, a search for "treaty" will also match "treaties" and a search for "contract" will match "contracts").

The search parser allows for Unix shell style pattern matching, including the ability to forward truncate (particularly handy for Norwegian!).

Truncation and other pattern matching

[ ... ] matches any one of the enclosed characters. A pair of characters separated by a hyphen ('- ' ) matches a range of characters (eg [a-c] will match 'a', 'b', or 'c'). If the first character is a caret ('^') or exclamation mark ('!'), characters not enclosed are matched (eg [^a-c] will match anything except 'a', 'b' or 'c').

The pattern must match an entire word. To search for words containing substrings, use "*substring*". The left square bracket symbol is also used for boolean grouping. Where you wish to start a word with a [ ... ], you need to put the whole word in quotes (eg "[ab]*ing").

As far as is consistent, SINO also supports regular expressions. It will, for example, treat the sequence ".*" as "*", ignore '^' and '$' characters and will even deal with agrep's '#' character. The main limitation is that sequences such as "[0-9]*" will not work.

Care should be taken when applying pattern matching to ensure that patterns are not ridiculously wild. The SINO search engine has to combine all of the occurrence information for each matched word with a boolean OR. Patterns such as "*" or even "a*" will lead to rather slow search times!

3.4.3. Search operators and syntax

Order of evaluation of operators

Where operators or terms otherwise have the same precedence for evaluation, they are evaluated left to right.

This is subject to the order of evaluation of terms and operators, from highest binding strength to lowest, is:

• proximity and segment operators (‘near’, ‘w/n’, ‘pre/n’, ‘w/seg’, ‘/n/’, ‘/m, n/’, ‘@ name’, ‘name (term)’)

For example, a search for ‘radio or television near contempt’ will give every case mentioning ‘radio’, whether or not the case refers to ‘contempt’, because ‘near’ has a higher binding strength than ‘or’ and so ‘television near contempt’ is evaluated first.

In contrast ‘radio or television and contempt’ or ‘contempt and radio or television’ gives only cases which do deal with contempt, because the ‘or’ is evaluated before the ‘and’.

Controlling the order of evaluation of operators

Parentheses may be used to alter the order of operation. Round, square and curly brackets are all recognised. If you need to make any special symbols literal, these should be enclosed in quotes (double, single or back quotes).

A good rule of thumb is always to use parentheses to specify the order of evaluation of operators wherever a search uses more than one type of operator - just in case.

The AND operator

The boolean AND operator allows you to find documents which contain two (or more) words or phrases. It is usually written as ‘and’ in SINO searches. Some typical searches are:

Where the "and" operator is used it has low precedence (like on Lexis) - it is only evaluated after both of its arguments have been fully evaluated. The rationale for this is that OR is usually used for synonyms which ought to group tightly and so to give AND a lower precedence is usually more convenient for free text searching and is less likely to lead neophyte searchers into difficulties.

The AND operator may also be written as: '+', '&', "&&" or ';'. Where it is written in any of these forms (ie other than ‘and’), it has a higher precedence than a boolean OR, which is the more traditional approach. This means that the STATUS-like ‘+’ operator has a different meaning to the ‘and’ operator.

The OR operator - specifying synonyms

The boolean OR operator, usually written as ‘or’, is used to find documents containing either or both of two terms and is typically used to find synonymous words and phrases. Examples include:

The NOT operator - excluding documents

The NOT operator allows you to find documents which contain one thing but not another. It may be written as: "not", '-', or '^'. In practice, this operator is seldom used, but to illustrate:

Don't use hyphenation in searches, because a search for anti-discrimination is interpreted as anti not discrimination - which is hardly what was intended! Similarly, a search for pre-nuptial is interpreted as a search for pre not nuptial .

Proximity operators - the NEAR operator

Proximity operators are used to find documents where 2 or more terms must appear close to each other. SINO indexes documents in terms of where words appear. Consequently, all proximity operators are in terms of word positions.

The simplest form of this class of operators is "near" (as used on Info One). This operator requires that words or phrases appear within 50 words of each other. For example:

The ‘near’ operator will suffice for many searches where some greater proximity than more occurrence on the same page (ie ‘and’) is required. However, where more precise proximity must be specified, the more precise operators described below may be used.

Proximity operators - Specified proximity

For more flexible proximity searching, you have the choice of Lexis-like or Status-like operators. These take the following forms:

There are no operators in SINO which can find occurrences of two words in the same paragraph, or in the same sentence, because SINO’s concordance does not record paragraphs or sentences.

3.4.4. Limiting the breadth of searches - ‘Select Database’

In the SINO Full Search Form, the ‘Select Database’ window shows ‘All AustLII databases’ as the default option, so the search will be over legislation, case law and secondary materials simultaneously. However, using ‘Select Database’, you can choose to limit the scope of a search to a single database, or to a pre-defined grouping of databases. The only pre-defined groupings of databases that can be searches are ‘All Legislation Databases’, ‘All Case Law Databases’ and ‘All Secondary Materials Databases’, as shown below. Select an item in the list to change the search scope.

It is possible to customise the databases. Combinations such as ‘All NSW Databases’, or ‘All Industrial Law Databases’, or user-defined combinations, would be valuable.

Caution - Change Database Selection back after use

If you use the ‘back’ button to return to the SINO search screen in order to enter new search terms, then the Database Selection will be the same as for the previous search, unless you change it. This is a common cause of search failure.

3.4.5. Limiting searches to fields using ‘Search scope’

AustLII databases as yet only have two fields in each document (sometimes called ‘named sections’ or ‘segments’) - ‘Title’ (all information included in the HTML title for a document) and ‘Text’ (everything else).

The default option is to search ‘Title & Text’, but searches may be limited as follows.

The ‘this legislation name’ and ‘this case name’ options are, in effect, combinations of ‘Search Scope’ and ‘Database Selection’. Their use in relation to cases and legislation is discussed later.

Restricting search scope from the Search Terms window

You can also restrict searching to the title section from the Search Terms window using the Lexis-style syntax of ‘title ( terms )’ or the STATUS-style syntax ‘terms @ title’. For example, to search for pages that only mention ‘Toonen’ in the title (eg Toonen v Australia), the following searches will work:

This is particularly useful for ‘mixed scope’ searches. For example, to find all cases dealing with superannuation where a University was a party to the case seems difficult, because you simultaneously wish to restrict Search Scope to ‘this case name’ in order to search for ‘university’, but need the Scope to be ‘Title and Text’ in order to search for ‘superannuat*’. The answer is to leave the Search Scope as ‘Title and Text’ and search for one of the following:

Caution - Change Search Scope back to default after use

If you use the ‘back’ button to return to the SINO search screen in order to enter new search terms, then the Search Scope will be the same as for the previous search, unless you change it. This is a common cause of search failure.

3.4.6. The ‘Display Hits’ window

This window is not usually important. It merely sets the number of retrieved documents for which AustLII will display titles in a single page. However, if more documents are retrieved, there will be an option at the bottom of each page of titles displayed asking if you wish to display another page of titles.

3.4.7. Limiting searches to date ranges (#date )

Searches can be limited to cases before a date (<), after a date (>) or between dates (><). For example, ‘#date>1 January 1996 and estoppel’ finds estoppel cases since 1/1/96; ‘#date><1992 1995 and contempt’ finds contempt cases in 1993 and 1994 only.

3.5. Display of search results

The standard search form, accessed from AustLII’s front page via the search window, uses relevance ranking as a default. This option allows inexperienced users to search over the AustLII databases with reasonable effectiveness without requiring of them any knowledge of search connectors or the other more sophisticated search facilities which are available via AustLII’s boolean search mechanism.

In addition, experienced users who want search results ranked in likely order of relevance to the search request will find the relevance ranking facility valuable for certain types of searches. Limitations of the current relevance ranking facility for sophisticated searching are discussed below.

Searching using relevance ranking merely requires the user to enter one or more words, or a phrase, Act name or case name, to describe the subject matter of the search. Words or phrases may be entered in any order. The example is used below of a search for ‘neighourhood dispute over dividing fences’.

The search engine will then find documents which contain one or more words from your search terms and presents them in what it determines to be the ‘most relevant’ to ‘least relevant’ order. This process (described in more detail below) is usually called ‘relevance ranking’.

3.5.1. How AustLII’s relevance ranking works

All punctuation and other things which don't appear to be "words" are stripped from the search request (by a CGI script). Common words are also deleted (by SINO), including ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’ and ‘near’.

A list of the remaining search terms is compiled, in increasing order of how relatively frequently each search term appears in the whole database.

All documents containing at least one of the search terms are retrieved, and are ranked on the basis of:

(b) how many times each search term occurs in the document, adjusted for the weighting applied to each occurrence of a search term (see below).

Relevance ranking is primarily determined by (a), so that (for example) all documents containing three search terms will be ranked higher than those containing only two of those search terms. Within each cohort determined by (a), ranking is then determined by (b), as described below.

The weighting of the occurrence information in (b) above is determined according to (i) the relative infrequency of the term in the whole database (to favour occurrences of search terms which occur relatively infrequently) and (ii) how early in a document the term appears (to favour occurrences of search terms in the document title or near the start of the document).

3.5.2. Standard display of search results

The following is a search result page for ‘intercept near s7 near warrant’ search terms. As you can see, it uses ‘this Boolean query’ as well as relevance ranking as indicated below.

The ranked list of search results is then displayed, indicating in square brackets after each document title, a weighted occurrence score expressed as a percentage figure. So, [100%] means that the system considers this entry as being most relevant. The remaining entries in the list of search results are considered relative those with [100%] as the weighted occurrence score.

In the example above, the first two entries have [100%] as their score. Note that the weighted occurrence score decreases from [100%] to [88%] in the third entry and then to [72%] in the fourth.

3.5.3. Using the search results list

Multiple pages of search results

If a search produces more than one page of search results (usually 50 items unless changed using the ‘Display Hits’ window), then the bottom of the search will appear as follows, allowing the user to go to another page listing the next 50 hits.

Depending on the nature of the research, it may be necessary to consider only the first five to ten pages of search results. Here, the relevance ranking can be used as one of the factors to determine whether it is useful to keep checking results in subsequent pages.

Going from one document in the list to the next

When the user goes to a document in a result list in order to view it, it is necessary to go back to the result list in order to view the next document in the list. There is no facility to jump directly from one document in a list to the next document.

Going back to the search results list at a later time

It will usually be possible to go back to a list of search results even though many intervening hypertext links have been viewed. In addition to just using the Netscape ‘back’ button, it is possible to go directly back to any prior set of search results by using the ‘history list’ under the ‘Go’ menu. The example below shows two sets of ‘AustLII Databases Search Results ...’ that it is possible to go back to.

3.5.4. Viewing search terms - the ‘Context’ buttons

Going to the first occurrence of a search term

When a document is accessed as a result of a search, a [Context] button appears in the set of navigation buttons at the top of document, as illustrated below for both case law and legislation documents. To go to the first occurrence of any of the search terms used in the search, simply click on the word ‘Context’ and its red arrow.

Going back and forward between search terms

In the body of a document, all occurrences of a search term (not just those that satisfied the search request) are presented with ‘up’ and ‘down’ context arrows on either side.

Tips and problems in using ‘Context’

The following tips are important to avoiding misunderstandings about ‘Context’:

‘Context’ displays every separate occurrence of every search term, even if an occurrence does not satisfy the search criteria. For example, a search for ‘pollution near water’ will result in context displays of ‘water’ even where there is no mention of ‘pollution’ nearby. It is necessary to just keep going through the context display until the significant occurrences are displayed.

It is necessary to wait until the whole document has loaded before using the ‘context’ button. Loading is complete when the status line at the bottom of the screen says ‘Document done’, as illustrated below.

If the part of the document containing the search term is not loaded, ‘Context’ will not find it. Furthermore, premature use of ‘Context’ will terminate the loading of the rest of the document, so the ‘Context’ button will not work no matter how long you wait. The solution to premature use of the ‘Context’ button is to reload the page (see Chapter 2).

‘Context’ does not work with Noteups - Noteups use as search terms hypertext link text not visible on screen (eg "ira1988242 s85"), but ‘Context’ only scans for text visible on screen. So, even though a ‘Context’ button appears with Noteups, it will not work.

Use of Netscape’s FIND feature

Sometimes it may be useful to use Netscape’s FIND feature (or equivalent in Internet Explorer) to search for an unusual search term, if other search terms are so common as to make ‘Context’ cumbersome. As with ‘Context’, it is necessary to wait until the whole document has loaded before using FIND.

3.6. Appendix: SINO search language emulations

SINO is designed to accept connectors and proximity operators in a way similar to how they are used in other search languages familiar to lawyers, particularly those used by Lexis, Info-One/LawPac and STATUS (as used by SCALE). Not all elements of these search languages are emulated. The following tables list available elements from the emulated search languages:

3.6.1. Operators similar to LawPac/Info-One

Info One was a commercial Australian provider of CD-ROM based and on-line services covering (primarily) State case law, prior to the company being bought by Butterworths in 1995. Their CD and on-line products both used the same search language, from around 1991 to 1995, and as a result many Australian lawyers became familiar with these search operators.

and	boolean AND (words/phrases must appear in same document)
or	boolean OR (either or both words/phrases must appear)
not	boolean NOT (the first word/phrase must appear but the second word must not)
near	words and phrases must appear within 50 words of each other
@	word or phrase must appear in specified section (only works for simple phrase @ section searches - Lexis syntax preferred)
[ ]	square brackets may be used to group operators
"term"	double quotes may be used to escape the special meaning of and, not etc
#key	keyed field searches are yet to be implemented

In general, the implementation is fairly faithful to the original. The fact that SINO indexes words rather than characters, means that the near operator has slightly different meaning. Another slight difference is that or has higher precedence than and (a common error for many neophytes anyway). As some punctuation characters have special meaning to other search languages, it is important not to include such characters in searches.

3.6.2. Operators similar to Lexis and DiskROM

Lexis/Nexis is the world's largest on-line legal database. The search language used by Lexis is similar to that used by several other commercial products, including the Innerview software as used by the Australian CD-ROM producer DiskROM.

and	boolean AND (words/phrases must appear in same document)
or	boolean OR (either or both words/phrases must appear)
and not	boolean NOT (the first word must appear but the second word must not)
w/seg	words and phrases must appear within the same section (segment)
w/n	words or phrases must occur within n words of each other
pre/n	first word must proceed second by less than n words
section(terms)	word or phrase must appear in specified section (not implemented)
()	round brackets may be used to group operators
"term"	double quotes may be used to escape the special meaning of and, not etc
key	keyed field searches are yet to be implemented

SINO counts common words (noise words) as occupying word positions for search purposes. This will give subtly different results from Lexis for searches such as "sale goods" (which will not match "sale of goods"). There is currently no support for the Lexis operators not w/n and not w/seg .

3.6.3. Operators similar to SCALE (STATUS operators)

Status was one of the first free text retrieval systems to be developed (in the early 1970's !). It was used by the short lived Eurolex service and is still in use in Australia by the Commonwealth Attorney-General's service SCALE. SINO allows the following STATUS-like operators:

+	boolean AND (words/phrases must appear in same document)
,	boolean OR (either or both words/phrases must appear)
-	boolean NOT (the first word/phrase must appear but the second word must not) Note: this feature has been deactivated due to the confusion this may caused for inexperience users eg Attorney-General would mean Attorney but not General.
/n/	words and phrases must appear within n words of each other
/m, n/	words must appear within m to n words of each other (m and n may be negative)
@	word or phrase must appear in specified section (only works for simple phrase @ section searches - the Lexis syntax is preferred)
()	round brackets may be used to group operators
#key	keyed field searches are yet to be implemented

SINO does not index paragraphs and so the // (within paragraph) operator is not available. The meaning of /n/ is more general (but more useful) than is the case for Status. Otherwise, the implementation is fairly close to the original.

3.6.4. Operators similar to C and agrep

For users who come from a computing science background, the following C-like and agrep like operators are also supported:

& or &&	C-like boolean AND (words/phrases must appear in same document)
\| or \|\|	C-like boolean OR (either or both words/phrases must appear)
;	agrep-like boolean AND (words/phrases must appear in same document)
,	agrep-like boolean OR (either or both words/phrases must appear)
^	boolean NOT (the first word/phrase must appear but the second word must not)
() or {} or []	square, round or curly brackets may be used to group operators

The implementation of C and agrep style searches is experimental and not intended for serious use.

AustLII Guide to Legal Research on the Web

3. Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII)

3.1. Background to AustLII

3.2. Primary legal materials on AustLII

3.2.1. Legislation

3.2.2. Commonwealth courts and tribunals - decisions

3.2.3. State and Territory Courts and Tribunals

3.2.4. Other primary materials databases

3.3. Accessing AustLII’s databases - menus

3.3.1. Primary materials database title pages

3.4. Searching AustLII

3.4.1. The SINO search engine - introduction

SINO emulations of other common search languages

The SINO search interface

(i) Standard search form

(ii) Full search form

SINO search basics

Summary of search operators

3.4.2. Words and phrases - what is searchable

Non-searchable words and characters

Plurals

Truncation and other pattern matching

3.4.3. Search operators and syntax

Order of evaluation of operators

Controlling the order of evaluation of operators

The AND operator

The OR operator - specifying synonyms

The NOT operator - excluding documents

Proximity operators - the NEAR operator

Proximity operators - Specified proximity

3.4.4. Limiting the breadth of searches - ‘Select Database’

Caution - Change Database Selection back after use

3.4.5. Limiting searches to fields using ‘Search scope’

Restricting search scope from the Search Terms window

Caution - Change Search Scope back to default after use

3.4.6. The ‘Display Hits’ window

3.4.7. Limiting searches to date ranges (#date )

3.5. Display of search results

3.5.1. How AustLII’s relevance ranking works

3.5.2. Standard display of search results

3.5.3. Using the search results list

Multiple pages of search results

Going from one document in the list to the next

Going back to the search results list at a later time

3.5.4. Viewing search terms - the ‘Context’ buttons

Going to the first occurrence of a search term

Going back and forward between search terms

Tips and problems in using ‘Context’

Use of Netscape’s FIND feature

3.6. Appendix: SINO search language emulations

3.6.1. Operators similar to LawPac/Info-One

3.6.2. Operators similar to Lexis and DiskROM

3.6.3. Operators similar to SCALE (STATUS operators)

3.6.4. Operators similar to C and agrep

3. Australasian Legal Information Institute
(AustLII)