Help
Download Compass User Guide (PDF, 4.3Mb) and Compass User FAQ (1.4 Mb).
Searching
The search box in the top right is the easiest way to find material in History Compass. Type one or more words into the box and press the Go button, or use the Enter key on your keyboard.
Unless you have very specific requirements, it is often best simply to type short search queries; often one or two words may be all you need. By default, if you search for two or more words, the search engine will look for all of the words you enter, ie will treat the query as a Boolean AND.
The search is also insensitive to case: searching for essay, ESSAY or ESsaY will all retrieve the same results.
Furthermore, the search engine will also search for words with the same stem, ie a search for sub will also retrieve subversive, subscribe and sublimation.
Search ranking
When it compiles the result list, the search engine returns results in the following order of priority:
- Matches in the article title
- Matches in the article abstract
- Matches in the article author name
- Matches in the article references
- Matches in the article notes
- Matches in the full text of the article
Special characters
If you want to query terms that include accented characters in the Latin alphabet you do not need to use accents. For example, a search for allah will match Allāh. Alternatively, if you copy text with accents (say, from A Cosmopolitan Salon-Hostess: Friederike Brun's Revision of Schiller in Idas ästhetische Entwickelung (1824), Literature Compass) and paste it into the search box, that will also retrieve the correct results.
Tips and tricks
Phrases
If you type more than one word in the search box, the search engine will retrieve all articles that contain all the terms, wherever they appear in the article. If you want more precision and just want to search for the exact phrase, you must include the phrase in double quotes, eg "arabic script".
Wildcards
The search engine allows you to modify your search term in a number of ways. Some of the most commonly used are the wildcards.
You can use the "?" symbol to perform a single character wildcard search; or you can use the "*" symbol for zero or more characters.
For example, jo? will match job and joy. The term jo* will also match jonah, john and journey.
Neither operator can be used as the first character of a term.
Fuzzy searches (pattern matches)
A fuzzy search is useful if you are not sure how to spell a particular word, or if alternative spellings are permissible. To perform a fuzzy search, simply add the "~" character to the end of the search term.
For example, grammer~ will match grammar, and Jeddah~ will match Jedda.
Quick Search is automatically set as a medium pattern search.
Proximity or adjacancy searches
You can find words that are near each other using the "~" character at the end of a phrase.
For example, the query "adam eve"~3 will match the two terms within 3 words of each other.
Boolean operators
The search engine supports AND, OR and NOT as Boolean operators, all of which must be typed in upper case.
The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document.
The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document.
The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT.
Combining and grouping
The use of brackets allows you to group terms, and achieve greater complexity in the construction of your query.
My Compass
Registration
We want to make the registration process as easy as possible for you so we simply ask you to provide your name, e-mail and your password. We make sure that the data you provide is used as specified in our Privacy policy statement.
Login
To login make sure you provide your email with which you registered and your chosen password.
Problems with the login
If you forget your password then please provide your email address that you created the My Compass account with and we will send you your password via email. If you do not get the email containing your password within a day of requesting it please use our feedback form to get in touch with out support team who will be able to help you further.
Bookmarks
You can bookmark Compass content in three different ways:
- using the ADD TO MY COMPASS checkbox and ADD SELECTED ARTICLES TO MY COMPASS button on Browse and Search Results screens.
- using the BOOKMARK THIS ENTRY button when viewing abstracts
- creating your own bookmarks using the ADD AN NEW ENTRY TO THIS WORKGROUP button in My Compass. This feature allows you to create any bookmark containing non-Compass content by simply using following fields: URL, Description and Notes.
Searches
You can save your favourite searches in My Compass using the SAVE THIS SEARCH button on the Search Result page underneath Refine by Section feature.
Workgroups
This is a powerful feature of My Compass that allows you to create collections of bookmarked content and saved searches and share them with other Compass users. Every workgroup will have a six digit passcode assigned to it automatically that you can view at the top of the My Compass area of the screen. To share the contents of your workgroup simply email the passcode to your colleagues who then need to log in into their My Compass account, click on JOIN WORKGROUP button and enter the passcode you supplied them with.
