The search interface is made of three sections: Search, Explore, and Results. These are described in detail below.
You may start searching either from the Search section or from the Explore section.
Search
This section shows your current search criteria and allows you to submit keywords to search in the library.
Each new submission adds the entered keywords to the list of search criteria.
To start a new search instead of adding keywords to the current search, use the Reset search button, then enter your new keywords.
To replace an already submitted keyword, first remove it by unchecking its checkbox, then submit a new keyword.
You may control the extent of your search by selecting where to search. The options are:
Everywhere: Search your keywords in all bibliographic record fields and in the text content of the available documents.
In authors or contributors: Search your keywords in author or contributor names.
In titles: Search your keywords in titles.
In all fields: Search your keywords in all bibliographic record fields.
In documents: Search your keywords in the text content of the available documents.
You may use boolean operators with your keywords. For instance:
AND: Finds entries that contain all specified terms. This is the default relation between terms when no operator is specified, e.g., a b is the same as a AND b.
OR: Finds entries that contain any of the specified terms, e.g., a OR b.
NOT: Excludes entries that contain the specified terms, e.g., NOT a.
Boolean operators must be entered in UPPERCASE.
You may use logical groupings (with parentheses) to eliminate ambiguities when using multiple boolean operators, e.g., (a OR b) AND c.
You may require exact sequences of words (with double quotes), e.g., "a b c". The default difference between word positions is 1, meaning that an entry will match if it contains the words next to each other, but a different maximum distance may be specified (with the tilde character), e.g., "web search"~2 allows up to 1 word between web and search, meaning it could match web site search as well as web search.
You may specify that some words are more important than others (with the caret), e.g., faceted^2 search browsing^0.5 specifies that faceted is twice as important as search when computing the relevance score of the results, while browsing is half as important. Such term boosting may be applied to a logical grouping, e.g., (a b)^3 c.
Keyword search is case-insentitive, accents are folded, and punctuation is ignored.
Stemming is performed on terms from most text fields, e.g., title, abstract, notes. Words are thus reduced to their root form, saving you from having to specify all variants of a word when searching, e.g., terms such as search, searches, and searching all produce the same results. Stemming is not applied to text in name fields, e.g., authors/contributors, publisher, publication.
Explore
This section allows you to explore categories associated with the references.
Check a category to add it to your search criteria and narrow your search. The results will only show entries that are associated with the category, and more specific terms may appear under the newly selected category.
Uncheck a category to remove it from your search criteria and broaden your search results.
The numbers shown next to the categories indicate how many entries are associated with each category in the current set of results. Those numbers will vary based on your search criteria to always describe what's in the current set of results. Likewise, categories and whole facets will disappear when the result set has no entry associated to them.
Results
This section shows the search results. When no search criteria has been given, it shows the full content of the library (up to 20 entries per page).
Each entry of the results list is a link to its full bibliographic record. From the bibliographic record view, you may continue exploring the search results by going to previous or following records in your search results, or you may return to the list of results.
Additional links, such as Read document or View on [website name], may appear under a result. These give you quick access to the resource. Those links will also be available in the full bibliographic record.
The Abstracts button lets you toggle the display of abstracts within the list of search results. Enabling abstracts, however, will have no effect on results for which no abstract is available.
Various options are provided to let you sort the search results. One of them is the Relevance option, which ranks the results from most relevant to least relevant. The score used for ranking takes into account word frequencies as well as the fields where they appear. For instance, if a search term occurs frequently in an entry or is one of very few terms used in that entry, that entry will probably rank higher than another where the search term occurs less frequently or where lots of other words also occur. Likewise, a search term will have more effect on the scores if it is rare in the whole library than if it is very common. Also, if a search term appears in, e.g., the title of an entry, it will have more effect on the score of that entry than if it appeared in a less important field such as the abstract.
The Relevance sort is only available after keywords have been submitted using the Search section.
Categories selected in the Explore section have no effect on the relevance score. Their only effect is to filter the list of results.
Many countries in Africa have mother tongue policies which require learners to be taught in their mother tongue for at least some years of primary education. This paper discusses the implementation of such policies in relation to mathematics terminology in the teaching and learning of mathematics. I present and discuss two strategies of dealing with mathematical terminology when teaching in the mother tongue: the strategy of developing mathematics registers in the local languages and the...
We r eport on two c ase s tudies in whi ch we investigated m athematics for tea- ching. We were interested in the mathematical k nowledge teachers need to know, and know how to use, in order to teach mathematics well. The two case studies focused on t he t eaching of pr obability in Gr ade 8 a nd t he t eaching of functions in Grade 10. We discuss the mathematics for teaching probability and functions in terms of the mathematical 'problem solving' or 'mathematical work' demanded of the...
Most researchers, on adolescent reproductive health and associated vulnerability to contracting Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome HIV/AIDS, have explicitly highlighted the paradoxical misfit between adolescent knowledge of HIV/AIDS transmission dynamics and positive change in behaviour. Popular explanation focuses more on socio-cultural factors such as male chauvinism, peer influence and pressure, and stoicism towards death in most African cultures. An...
The paper discusses findings of a study that investigated Malawian students' meanings for some probability vocabulary. The
study explores the meanings that, prior to instruction, students assign to some words that are commonly used in teaching probability.
The aim is to have some insight into the meanings that students bring to the classroom. The sample for the study consisted
of 154 students in their first year of secondary school education and whose first language was Chichewa. The paper...
What can explain the apparent lack of political will to formulate, implement and monitor the budget process and public financial management in accordance with the overall goals of the Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy (MPRS)? Using qualitative methodology the findings are drawn from the content of documents, transcripts of interviews and to some extent, direct observations. 62 key informant interviews (KII) were carried out with stakeholders in the budget process from government, civil...