Using the GALLOP PortalSharing Best Practices for Effective Retrieval

September 9, 2014

 Valerie Footz

Alberta Legislature Library

Scope Note

Contributions vary by

jurisdiction

Percentage of Contributed

Items by Jurisdiction

(August 2014)

NL2.8% AB

4.2% NB0.4%

BC22.0%

MB2.3%

NS1.7%

ON14.9%

NT0.7%

QC16.6%

SK1.9%

DSP32.6%

Basic Search

Searches all fields

Click on logo to return to this

page at any time

Your feedback is important!

Results

At a glance “geography”

of results

Navigation

Result ranking based on

location of and frequency

of search terms

Current search and item result

Subject headings

Text summary drawn from first 350,000 characters

(approximately46,000 words)

Links to full text

Records may have multiple full text items attached

Some records may

contain some textual

problems which can

pose problems

when conducting

searches

Advanced Searches

Limits search to:

TitleAuthorSubject

Where to start?

• Basic Search – Keyword

• Advanced Search - All fields

• Advanced Search - Citation text

2,550

2,550

108

Boolean Searches

• AND – default between terms– compensation remuneration

• OR– compensation OR remuneration

• NOT– compensation OR remuneration

NOT indemnities• Search strings– (member OR mla) AND salaries

Compensation

IndemnitiesRemuneration

Terminology• Truncation/Wildcard - * – gambl* = gamble, gambling, Gamblin, etc.– parl*ment = parliament, parlement

• Phrases - Quotation marks for exact phrase– “electronic gambling” (guillemets do not work « langue parlee »)

• Near – “Term in quotation marks” ~# of words – order of terms does not matter– “electronic gambling” ~5

Fuzzy Searching / Variants in SpellingKowalsky~0.1 = 31,290

Sokolsky, Kowalsky, Kurlansky, Kolausok, chronology, Sawatsky, quality, etc.

Kowalsky~0.5 = 3,249Kowalsky, Sokolsky, Kowalski, Kosatsky,

Sawatsky, etc.

Kowalsky~0.8 = 1,200Kowalsky, Kowalski

Kowalsky~0.9 = 77

Searching by Date

• You cannot sort results by date, but you can search by date.

• Try truncation – 201*

Serials• Multiple dates on attached

items causes problems for:• sorting• finding specific issue • date range searching

Searching by Jurisdiction

• Limit to selected jurisdictions by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking

To Summarize

• Citation text = searching Author, Title, Subject only

• Use AND, OR, NOT (English operators must be used)

• Use parentheses in search strings• * for truncation & wildcard• “quotation marks” for phrase

searching (not « guillemets »)

• To find words near each other, “electronic gambling”~5

• Fuzzy searching – Kowalsky~0.8• Truncate date 201* to retrieve

2010 onwards• Ctrl-click to select jurisdictions• GALLOP Portal does not reflect

the complete holdings of the contributing libraries!