About the THOMAS Search System

Searching in THOMAS is performed by the InQuery information retrieval system, developed by the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval based at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

InQuery employs a relevance-ranking algorithm for searching and displays the most relevant items first on the results list. Experienced searchers who wish to use Boolean searching may use native InQuery syntax to override the relevance-ranking default.

To learn more about how InQuery works in the THOMAS system, choose from among the following topics:

• InQuery and Relevance Ranking
• The Complete Guide to Searching THOMAS Under InQuery
• InQuery Stopword List for THOMAS
• Using InQuery's Boolean, Proximity, and Relevance Operators
• Use of Native InQuery: Structured Searches (Examples of Boolean, Proximity and Fielded Searches)
• Web Developer's Guide on How to Make Direct Links to THOMAS Documents Providing Government Information on the Internet: Experiences with THOMAS (Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries, Austin, Texas, June 11-13, 1995)