Search

Basic Queries

Basic queries will search the title and body of a document much like your favorite web search engine.

Search terms are joined by default using an AND operator, so that the search phrase mutual aid will match document where both "mutual" and "aid" appear anywhere even if they do not appear near each other. That search phrase would match the sentence "The feeling was not mutual, and they gave us no aid."

Search terms are matched to similar words and synonyms. Searching run will match "run," "runs," and "running." Searching tired will match "tired" and "sleepy."

To search for exact phrases, where the words appear next to each other and synonyms aren't used, use quotation marks. To find the exact phrase "mutual aid", use the search phrase "mutual aid".

To search for multiple terms, you can use the OR operator. To find an document that mentions "autonomous" or "independent", search for autonomous OR independent.

More Complex Queries

If you want to search for all documents that mention either revolution or insurrection and mention mutual aid but none that mention councils, you need to combine some operators.

  • AND to combine terms
  • OR to select one of several terms
  • NOT to exclude terms
  • parentheses for grouping terms
  • quotation marks for exact phrase matches

To translate the above query into valid search syntax, you would type (revolution OR insurrection) AND "mutual aid" AND NOT council.

Advanced Queries

To search on a specific field, you can put the field's name before the search string. For example, if you wanted to find all documents with the title including the term "ego," you could search title:ego.

The following fields are available for querying:

  • title: The title of the document
  • author: The author(s) of the document
  • body: The main body text of the document
  • year: The year the document was published
  • language: The primary language of the document as an IETF BCP 47 language tag, e.g., en for "English" or es for "Spanish"
  • pages: An estimated number of pages using A5 paper (assumes 400 words per page)

These fields can be combing with the other operators like title:(left OR wizard) AND author:"le guin".

Expert Queries

Anarchist Archive is powered by Elasticsearch and uses the "Query String" style search. Instead of just copying their documentation here, you can read their docs yourself ☺.