Smithers Oasis Resource Center, North America

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SITE SEARCH

There are five stages to using this search facility:

Enter keywords or text that you want to search the site for

See the hints and tips for information on how to use the special modifiers -, +, AND, OR, NOT, *, "

Select how you want the search to be performed

OR AND

OR search checks for occurrences of any of the words entered above. AND search checks for occurrences of all the words submitted above. A phrase can be searched for by encasing the text in the special " modifier.
This is over-ridden by the use of the special modifiers -, +, AND, and NOT

Select the search case

Insensitive Sensitive

Insensitive will match 'flower' to 'Flower' and 'FLOWER'.
Sensitive will only match 'Flower' to 'Flower'.

Select result format

Standard Compact

Standard shows the results with a title, description, URL, date last modified, and size of file.
Compact shows only the title, date last modified and size of file and is formatted to save space.

Click on the search button

This will give you a list of all matches, with a probability of it being a correct link. Click on one of the matches to go to that page.

Hints on using the search engine

It is important that you choose what you search for carefully. If, for instance, you choose to search for "Oasis", then you are likely to get a lot of pages listed. It would be better to refine your words and be more specific in what you are looking for, eg., an AND search for "floral industry events" would only show you the pages with 'floral' (or FLORAL, Floral, etc.), 'industry' and 'events' contained within the text.

Special modifers help you to perform more advanced searching. These modifiers work as shown in the examples below. Note that the modifiers may alter the AND/OR choice you might make.

+Floral +resources
meaning: requires floral and requires resources
Finds "Floral resources", "FLORAL Resources" and "resources are available for the floral industry".
Does not find the lowercase "floral resources" (if case is sensitive), nor the abbreviated "Floral resource".

-floral +events
meaning: forbid floral, requires events
Finds "industry events", "events".
Does not find "events for the floral industry" nor "floral events".

or Education and documents
meaning: prefer education, require documents
Finds "Education resources", "documents for florists" and "floristry education documents".
Documents with both terms appear higher in the list.

"world's best design"
meaning: require the phrase "world's best design"
Finds "world's best design".
Does not find "best designs the world's seen" nor "world's design best".

and facts and Flor*
meaning: requires facts, requires words starting with "flor"
Finds "facts for Florists" (if case sensitive), "floristry facts" (if case insensitive), "floral facts".
The asterisk is a wildcard representing any four or fewer characters.

not plant and flowers and pictures or images
meaning: requires flowers, requires pictures, forbids plant, prefers images
First lists "pictures and images of flowers", then "pictures of flowers".
Does not list uppercase "Pictures of Flowers" (if case sensitive), nor forbidden "plant picture".

Where is the *frog*?
meaning: ignores common words like where, is and the - requires words containing "frog"
Finds "frog", "frogleg" and "bullfrog".
To suppress the ignore feature, use quotes, as in "Where is the *frog*?".

The asterisk is a powerful search tool, but has some limitations. It cannot span words - that is, the query "powerfu*earch" would not match the first sentence of this paragraph - and it can represent at most four letters or numbers. To avoid overly broad searches, the asterisk can only be used in words or phrases which have at least three alpha-numeric characters. A search for "th*" would be ignored.

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