Search Instructions

• Member and Public Databases
• Selecting Databases
• Entering Search Queries
• Viewing Retrieved Documents
• Number of Responses
• Relevance Feedback

Member and Public Databases

The following databases are open to the public:

Business, Conferences, General, Newsletters, Policy, Press Translations, Profiles, and Science & Technology

These databases include all public plus members-only documents:

Business Plus, Policy Plus, and Profiles Plus. (Note that public companions to these are automatically included.)

Selecting Databases

All databases are selected automatically when choosing "All Databases." Otherwise, you must select at least one database before you may enter your search query. To select a database, users of graphical browsers may simply click on the line listing the database name. To select multiple databases, hold down the shift key when clicking on contiguous database names, and the control key when adding non-contiguous names. Users of the lynx browser may simply press enter on each database in the database list.

Entering Search Queries

Type one or more words representing your query into the search window and press the "Search" button. All documents containing these words will be retrieved and ranked according to how many of them occur in each document. A retrieval of 1000 implies that all words occur in the document. For better results, it is recommended to include as many words -- synonyms, variants, and qualifiers -- in your query.

Viewing Retrieved Documents

After pressing the "Search" button, all selected databases will be searched simultaneously for documents satisfying your query. Each document will be listed below (you may need to scroll to view the list) with its title, file size, and document date (where available). Click or press enter on the title to retrieve the full text of the document.

A major feature of Gateway Japan is our focus on providing full texts of documents to the web. Because many of these documents are significantly large, it may be necessary to home in on portions of them to locate the specific text relevant to your query. This capability depends on which browser you are using, but Netscape users may enter the word to scan in the "Find" option under "Edit," while Lynx users may enter the word following a forward slash (/).

Note: some browsers may "forget" the data content of the response list after viewing the full text of a document. If this occurs, please use the "Reload" option on your browser at once to recover this data.

Number of Responses

Unless specified by the user, each search will retrieve up to 20 documents satisfying the query. However, some searches, when defined broadly in the query, will generate more than 20 responses but will only display 20 of them. You may increase the number of responses displayed by changing the 20 in the "Maximum number of responses to return" field to the value you desire.

Relevance Feedback

The present search software includes a "Relevance Feedback" feature which enables users to recycle selected retrieved documents into subsequent searches further refining the relevance of retrieved documents. This feature is also known as "Query by Example," as the selected documents are examples representing the query. Click on the box (or press enter between the parentheses) at the beginning of each document listing to indicate that the document is to be used in the next query. Alternatively, users of graphical browsers may copy any portion of the text into the search window. When all relevant documents and/or text blocks have been selected, press the "Search" button to submit the new query.