Boolean Operator Searching

LegacyUser

Arnold Weisbrot said: This is a suggestion for enhancement of search in the Family Search interface. I suggest allowing the use of Boolean operators in searches (in many fields - not all make sense). The Boolean operators are AND, OR, and NOT. More general information is at http://libguides.mit.edu/c.php?g=1759... . An example might help:

I was searching for an ancestor who was born in Germany, but who emigrated to somewhere else, place unknown to me. I wanted to search using his name, birth date and birth place, plus a death place of "NOT Germany." I could also have used a death place of "Austria OR Hungary OR Poland OR a bunch of other places", but the NOT search would have been better. This Boolean operator search is widely implemented in many database management systems, and it would be beneficial to include this capability in Family Search.

As a related suggestion, it is desirable to make the searching operators a bit more easily found. For example, I discovered the fact that wildcards (* and #) are usable when asking an Elder at the Family History Library. I would probably have struggled through many help pages to find the one that describes search wildcards, considering that I did not know they existed!

LegacyUser

robertkehrer said: Arnold,

Thanks for the suggestion. I also believe that it would be of value in many research scenarios. It is on our list of future enhancements, but I cannot estimate a date at this time when it could be delivered.

-Robert

LegacyUser

Jade said: The wild-card information should be on every search page. This has been suggested for years, but Engineering evidently believes in hiding it (it only took about 5 years to get the Wiki unhidden, so there is hope). You can't hunt for the info if you don't know it exists.

Here is the wild-card information put on every search page at the WV State Archives site. See how easy it is?



Boolean operators should have been installed when the search engines were created (together with a link to explanations). Anyone know of a good reason why they were not?

LegacyUser

Austin William Bethers said: I would love if that was available. Sometimes I know that a relative was born in one of two or three places, but I only have the option of choosing one, and it requires a lot more work to find records. It could also be useful with names that are spelled differently, that often get poor search results.

dontiknowyou

Upvoting. (And bumping so others can review.)