Searching in Sinopia

There are two kinds of data you can search for in Sinopia:

1. data created in Sinopia (data entered in a Resource Template and saved in Sinopia)
2. external data accessible via the Questioning Authority service, searchable for purposes of copying the data to start a new description in Sinopia

The two kinds of searches behave differently because they use different services.

Searching for data created in Sinopia

The Sinopia search uses Elasticsearch. Below are some basics on how the search behaves and the options you have for constructing searches. If you have suggestions for improving how the search works, please open a feature request.

• All literal data is searched, from any field. This includes labels that Sinopia saves when you select an entity from an external source in a lookup field.

• The default sort order for results is by relevance.

• Matches found in title fields are ranked more highly than other matches. Title fields are those fields that are the object of the following properties:

  • RDA has preferred title of work: http://rdaregistry.info/Elements/w/P10223
  • RDA has preferred title of expression: http://rdaregistry.info/Elements/e/P20315
  • RDA has preferred title of item: http://rdaregistry.info/Elements/i/P40085
  • RDA has title proper: http://rdaregistry.info/Elements/m/P30156
  • BIBFRAME Main title: http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe/mainTitle
  • BIBFRAME Subtitle: http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe/subtitle
  • (NOTE: the BIBFRAME property http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe/title expects a blank node which will itself have a Main Title, so there's nothing directly to index for bibframe/title)

• Search is for whole words. There is no partial word searching, but you can use * as a wildcard character at the end of a string to achieve this.

  • Example: searching for sun does not find sunshine, but searching for sun* finds sun, sunshine, sunbathing, and so on.

• The default operator for multi-word searches is AND: when you enter more than one term in your search, Sinopia finds only resources that contain both words. To use the OR operator instead, use the vertical pipe.

  • Example: blue green finds Blue hat, green hat but not Blue moon. But blue | green will find Blue hat, green hat, Blue moon, and Green eggs and ham.

• Multi-word searches are not phrase searches; to treat your search as a phrase, use quotation marks.

  • Example: french history finds French history pamphlets and Pamphlets from the French Revolution, a history but "french history" finds French history pamphlets and not Pamphlets from the French Revolution, a history

For more details on the Elasticsearch service we are using see [Elasticsearch Reference [7.4] » Query DSL » Full text queries » Simple Query String Query] (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/7.4/query-dsl-simple-query-string-query.html). Sinopia uses the default settings, except for the default operator, which in Sinopia is AND (not OR).

Searching for external data via Questioning Authority

coming soon