Quote:
Originally Posted by qariwa55
When I type items in the search engine, I mean what I say. First, if I type "Bruce Mazlish" as the author, I want Bruce Mazlish. I do not mean every Bruce who is an author. I try putting the name in quotes ("Bruce Mazlish") but this does not make any difference. The search engine does not seem to support Boolean principles at least as a default.
Second, if I enter both author and title info, I want search output that meets ALL of my search conditions. But GetBooks does not seem to work that way either.
|
Author includes all results that include any of the words in the author search field. Same goes for title. Keywords searches everything. This is by design.
That said, you can do specific searches for specific sets of words in specific fields using boolean logic. Click the binoculars icon next to the keywords field. This allows you do do advanced searches. Go to the second tab put "Bruce Mazlish" (without the quotes) into the author field. Keywords will show:
author:"Bruce Mazlish"
This will search for only matches where the author is exactly "Bruce Mazlish". It is smart enough to work even when there are multiple authors. As long as the one of the authors is exactly "Bruce Mazlish" it will match.
There are a lot of options which you can use the advanced search dialog to build. Once you get the hang of the syntax and fields you can type it directly into the keywords field. You don't have to use the dialog.
Now as to why the default is an any match search. "J. K. Rowling", "J. R. R. Tolkien" are why. When you do an exact match it must match exactly. Meaning "J. K. Rowling" won't match "JK Rowling" and it won't match "J K Rowling". Which means many results won't be included due to how the various stores handle author names. It's a situation where it's better to include a bit of cruft than it is not excluded valid (and wanted) results.