The CERL Thesaurus comes with a complex index that allows for sophisticated searches. The following search fields are available:

In addition to these searchable fields, the index contains the followin fields, which cannot be searched, but are used to generate the result set display:

Query Syntax

Search fields of the type string (except those ending in .orig) are word indexed, case-insensitive and diacritics are replaced by the base character. They can be searched by just typing the search term after the search key’s name, separated by a colon:

  • name:hamburg the term hamburg should appear in the name: field
  • personalName:(visser jacob) the terms visser and jacob should appear in the personalName: field in any order, regardless if adjacent or not
  • imprintName:“sermartelli e fratelli” the terms sermartelli e fratelli should appear in the imprintName: field in exactly this order

The fields named .orig contain the original field’s content as a phrase, case-sensitive, diacritics are not replaced:

  • imprintName.orig:“Bartolommeo Sermartelli e fratelli, Firenze”

Search fields of the type date allow for range searches:

  • last_changed:[2017-05-1 TO 2017-05-31] all records that have last been edited in May 2017
  • year_start:<1600 all entities that were born or started their activity before the year 1600.

Search terms can be combined by using the Boolean Operators AND, OR and NOT. Please note that these must always be written in upper case.

  • year_start:<1600 AND feature:prdv all records where the activity/birth date is before 1600 and that contain descriptions of printers devices
  • name:sermartelli AND name:(bartolomeo OR michelangelo) all records where the name field contains Sermartelli and either Bartolomeo or Michelangelo.

Truncation/Wildcards can be used as well. Please that using wildcards will slow down the response time remarkably.

  • ? replaces exactly one character
  • * replaces any number or characters (or none)

A more detailed description of the query syntax can be found here: https://www.cheatography.com/jelle/cheat-sheets/elasticsearch-query-string-syntax/

Searching Relationships

A number of the search keys listed above allow to retrace the relationship between the entities described in the CERL Thesaurus. It is assumed that one part of the relationship is known, e.g. a person or a place and using this person’s or place’s id, we can retrieve the records that link back to it.

For example: Knowing the ID for the place “Tübingen”, we can retrieve persons who went to university here: studied_in:cnl00014526