Research

Exploring the CEISMIC Collection

CEISMIC QuakeCoRE is part of Disciplinary Theme 4: Cultural and Social Factors Shaping Resilience. Our website is a federated, open-access archive connected to Digital NZ – a search site partnered with a vast range of organisations and digital collections from across Aotearoa. Digital NZ harvests metadata from our consortium partners, from other external websites, and from QuakeStudies; anything from the content providers that is tagged with “CEISMIC” will appear in a search of our archive. Through this, we can offer access to material housed by a range of databases.

Searching the CEISMIC collection can take some trial and error, especially for those unfamiliar with the repository. This page provides a simple breakdown of the way our search engine operates, and offers some helpful symbols and formulas to use when searching the archive. To find more specific and streamlined research topics, explore the curated collections in the right-hand column.

Infographic showing how material from different providers is filtered through Digital NZ to the CEISMIC search

Basic Search Operators

The search function on CEISMIC operates by sending a query to the Digital NZ API, which returns any relevant items tagged with CEISMIC and the other key words featured in the search. It is similar to a Google search, except it has a more specified database to pick results from. Entering simple terms and phrases into the search bar may return more results, but there are several tricks that can be used to refine results.

  • Typing a few words into CEISMIC is the simplest way to search, as the engine will look for items with any of these words. A search query like Animal Recovery will return results that contain animal, and recovery, and animal recovery.
  • Using quotation marks around certain words is a little more complex, as the search engine will look for the exact phrase. Searching "Animal Recovery" will only find items that contain the phrase “animal recovery” - not results that contain animal or recovery separately.
  • A fuzzy search employs the tilde symbol (~) to return results that nearly match the search term (but not exactly). Searching Animal Recover~ will return elements that match these words or are very similar. This allows for variations such as typos, plurals or suffixes like recovered or recovery.
  • The question mark (?) can be used as a wildcard, and acts as a single character. This can be used for simple word variations (e.g. bus, but, or bug), but is most useful when searching for dates. For example, searching Animal Recovery 201? will find results from the 2010s.
  • The asterisk (*) is also a wildcard, though it is a little more versatile as it can stand in for any number of characters. Again, this can be used for word variations such as plurals or suffixes (e.g. searching resilien* will bring back items tagged with both resilient and resilience), but it can also be placed in between words to encompass different phrases. For example, searching Bu* change might return results like bus exchange, busker’s exchange, or bus routes undergo big change.

Boolean Search Operators

The search function on CEISMIC also employs Boolean search operators to help narrow down or broaden the search; logic-based words like AND, OR, NOT, allow the search engine to limit results, return specific phrases, or find connections across the archive. Some examples are listed below.

  • A search of CEISMIC for recovery OR animals will tell the engine to find items about either recovery or animals. This will broaden the search results because any object with one or both of these terms will appear in the search result.
  • A search for recovery AND animals instructs the database to find items about both recovery and animals. This will limit the search results because the engine will only return objects containing both of these terms.
  • A search of the repository for recovery NOT animals will tell the engine to find items about recovery and exclude all items about animals. This will refine the search results because the query will bring back objects related to the first term, but no objects about the second term. Using the operator NOT in a search query will remove items tagged with both terms.

Complex Search Queries

These operators can be combined within a single search query to further refine results. Sometimes, it helps to use parentheses for more complicated searches, as this allows you to group terms together and control which words will be searched first. Think of ech term as refining the results of the previous term. For example, searching (recovery OR animals) AND resilien* will return items about either recovery or animals, as well as searching those results for the terms resilient or resilience.

Search queries can also be filtered according to category, year, content provider, and usage. Any of these filters can be used to further refine a search of the CEISMIC archive. For example, if you knew of a research paper on recovery and resilience that was published in 2019, you could apply the relevant filters on the CEISMIC website and narrow your search down to a select few results.

It can take some time to find the best words to input when using the search engine. Because the archive is human-curated, mistakes can happen, and items may not be extensively tagged. We are working to make each object as searchable as possible and set up curated collections centred on specific topics to make CEISMIC accessible to all.

Curated Collections

The CEISMIC team have been working to create new pages and collections to assist researchers when using the website. We have a wealth of knowledge in our repository, but sometimes sorting through the material can be overwhelming. Our new research pages aim to streamline this process, offering an overview of the topic and a curated collection of items that have been hand-picked by our team. Each item is accompanied by a short summary to provide researchers with an efficient path into the archive. We have also included a list of potential search queries, which acts as a starting point for further research and showcases the relevant content CEISMIC has to offer.

You can find these collections in the right-hand column at the top of this page. Feel free to explore the topics available – we are adding to these pages all the time. If you have any questions about our pages or suggestions for potential additions to these collections, please get in touch with us! Our team would love to hear from you.