Latin American Government Documents Archive

Search Help

Generally, your search results are ranked by relevance according to several factors:

  • how often the query terms appear in the page relative to how often they appear throughout the collection
  • how often the query terms appear in the page compared to the length of the page
  • whether the query terms appear in the URL
  • whether the query terms appear in the hostname

You can execute advanced searches using some of the following tricks:

  • Boolean search default is "and". For example, if you enter derechos humanos in the search field, the engine will search for derechos and humanos, not just derechos humanos as two words adjacent to one another. But, remember, both words must be present in the page to end up in your results list!
  • If you want results about 'derechos', but none with any reference to 'humanos' use a minus sign next to the term you do not want searched: derechos -humanos
  • If you know that what you're looking for is in a specific type of file, you can limit your search to just that format by adding type:[file type] to your search terms. For example, a PDF document about derechos humanos might be found using the following string: derechos humanos type:pdf
  • If you want to find out about a topic discussed specifically on the Argentine Interior Ministry's archived Web site, you can limit your search by adding site:[URL of archived site] to your search terms. For example, information about derechos humanos at the Argentine Interior Ministry's archived site would be found using the search string derechos humanos site:www.mininterior.gov.ar For full a list of original URLs collected for this project, click here.

Once you have your search results, you can refine them in the following ways:

  • In your results list, there will be a link to other versions. This takes you to a list of archived versions for that exact URL that you can browse by capture date.
  • If you click the more from... link, you will limit your results to hits from that single host. A search of derechos humanos might get you results from several different archived Web sites. If you want to limit your results to the Argentine Interior Ministry only, find a search result from that site and click the link to more from www.mininterior.gov.ar.

Text search capability is only available for the LAGDA archived Web collection. However, since the Internet Archive has been archiving Web sites since 1996, pre-September 2005 archived versions of many of the sites in LAGDA may be available through the Internet Archive's general Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine, however, is not text searchable; you must know the URL of the site you would like to view. In order to view earlier archived versions of sites in LAGDA through the Wayback Machine, click on the link labelled Look up URL in primary Wayback Machine found on the Wayback browse pages for LAGDA sites.