I’m trying to find threads discussing the U.S. Patriot Act and Patriot II, especially as they relate to libraries. I tried the “search” button, and, setting the search for titles only, entered terms in the keyword field: I tried “patriot act,” “United States patriot act”, “libraries AND patriot act OR patriot ii” – no matter how many search terms I enter, I always get the same message: “The search term you have entered is under the minimum word length (4) and therefore will not be found. Please make the term longer.” What gives?
You cannot use a search term that is less than three characters long. Try the following:
“patriot library”
“patriot libraries”
“united states patriot library”
…etc.
And while we’re at it, drop the AND and OR. The search engine we use doesn’t recognize any of the boolean operators, term grouping, phrases, or pretty much any other sort of fancy stuff you might want. Yes, it sucks, but we’re stuck with it: Any attempt to change it would mean an awful lot of work for the administration, in both the short and long term (since it’s harder to get support for the software, if it’s modified).
It’s not the end of the world. AND is implied, and if you must do an OR search, just do two searches.