Scope

• Each record in Dialog has many fields, such as title, author, subject headings, date, text, abstract, etc.
• Every word, every piece of numerical data in these fields is tracked in field-specific indexes.
• The indexes enable the searcher to search the contents of specific fields, which facilitates the targeting, limiting, or narrowing the set of resulting records (precision).

Types of Field/Index Commands

• Dialog provides two commands to specify the fields/indexes to be searched on:
  • Suffixes
    • These are used in the form:
      • s <search term>/suffix
    • NOTE: These are the Basic indexes, which are searched when no specific fields are selected to be searched in the search statement.
  • Prefixes
    • These are used in the form:
      • s prefix=<search term>
    • NOTE: These are the Additional indexes. They are not searched when no specific fields are selected to be searched in the search statement.

Example Field/Index Commands

Field/Index	Format	How Field Is Indexed	Example, Notes
title	/ti	word only	twister/ti
author	/ab	word only	doesn't recognize punctuation eg. cat's = cat s cat/ab
descriptor	/de	word and phrase	cat/de
journal name	jn=	phrase	jn=vanity(w)fair
company name	co=	phrase	co= Amgen
geographic name	gn=	phrase	gn= us
document type	dt=	phrase	dt=book
publication date	pd=	phrase	pd=910423 pd >=1992 pd < 9112?
publication year	py=	phrase	py=1996 py=1988:1989
publication year	/nnnn		/1996
language	la=	phrase	la=eng
English	/eng		s4/eng
fulltext	/fulltext		s2/fulltext
NOTES: There are many more Indexes and Limiters. The specific ones available depend upon the database being searched. This is why it is important to look at the Bluesheets for the databases you are going to search.