Ultrapedia Search Engine Walkthrough

This is a guide or walkthrough for the Ultrapedia Search Engine which  features  parametric browsing and federated searching;  here we describe these features and some of the other neat aspects of our search engine so you can get the best out of our library.

Lets start with the search box.  Type in a search string or term, something that you are interested in or hoping to find out more about.  For example the 'Carthaginians'

The Search Box

Clicking 'Search' or pressing enter will return  the 'Search Results Page' - like the one below:

The Search Results Page:

The Search Results Page: Returns the 100 most relevant items related to your search term with ten entries per page.  Each page is divided into three sections: The Main Body, The Top Section and The Left Hand Side Panel.

The Main Body - Occupies pretty much the central part of the web page.  For each item returned you'll find: the Book Title and Author; a Thumbnail image; a two line excerpt from the text surrounding your search term; the five most popular people within the book; the file date, size and number of hits; and several links giving more details: quick view (a text only view of the book text), an Adobe PDF version of the book (this preserves the original layout of the book) as well as HTML and RTF versions of the book.

The Top Section - Shows a federated search from Wikipedia, giving a two line excerpt from the Wikipedia entry of your search term.

The Left Hand Side Panel - There are five sections here: Are you looking for, Categories, People, Footnotes and Places.  Each of these sections help to narrow your search.

Are you looking for:  Offers some suggestions that could be of interest based on your search term.

Categories:  Some practical categories are offered to narrow your search.

People:  The People section lists the top 25 People within your search term.  Clicking on an entry will return just those books with the Person in them

Footnotes:  The Footnotes section lists the top 25 Footnotes within your search term.  Clicking on an entry will return just those books with the Footnote in them

Places:  The Places section lists the top 25 Places within your search term.  Clicking on an entry will return just those books with the Place in them.

Expanding Sections - Each section is expandable from 5 to 25 items, offering more choices and avenues of discovery.  Click the '20 more...'  link at the bottom of the section to expand it, it then changes to 'top 5' clicking 'top 5' will collapse the section.

Quick View - This presents the book text in plain ascii text.  Links are highlighted in the text in light blue, and mousing over and clicking will initiate a new search - returning a list of relevant books in the main body section. You can drilldown further by selecting another choice in the left hand side panel and so on.

In Quick View your search term is highlighted in yellow.  There are arrows either side of the search term to jump to the next occurance or back to the previous one.

Drill Down - Drilling down, or performing a search within a search allows you to narrow your search, for example choosing Rome from Places in the left hand side panel.  Each search term is highlighted in a different colour.  The arrows either side of the search term allow you to jump to the next occurance or back to the previous one.

PDF - Clicking the PDF link presents an Adobe PDF version of the book (this preserves the original layout of the book) see below.  Your search term is highlighted within the book and you can move onto the  previous/next document with the links in the top right hand corner of the page.