AltaVista: Required Terms: Part II

[Sarah Nesbeitt, Maxwell Library]

Thanks for the many responses to my query regarding using required terms
(preceding them with a "+") in AltaVista's simple search.

I got a couple comments reminding me not to leave a space between the "+" and
the required terms, but no, I didn't leave a space there, so that wasn't
the problem.  Thanks, though.

It appears that the weird results I got (AltaVista ignoring the "+" sign)
were due to the browser I was using at the time, although I wouldn't have
thought it mattered.  At home, I use Lynx (one of these days I'll purchase
a PPP account somewhere), and got the weird results.  Here at work, I tried
it with Netscape, and the example search "+nesbeitt +library +bridgewater"
brought up the correct number of results, 6.   Greg Notess' comment was
on the mark - this problem appears to be browser-dependent, and apparently Lynx 
interprets the + sign as something else.  This was using the latest version
of Lynx (2.6?), on a Unix system.  The word order doesn't matter, and no
odd version of Boolean logic comes into play here - it's just something
peculiar to Lynx, though for all I know it may happen with other browsers
as well.

>From now on, I'll stick to the Advanced Query screen when using AltaVista
from Lynx.

Sarah
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Sarah L. Nesbeitt                        
Reference Librarian                      E-mail: snesbeitt at bridgew.edu
The Clement C. Maxwell Library                   nesbeitt at alumni.sils.umich.edu
Bridgewater State College                Voice:  (508) 279-6153
Bridgewater, MA  02325  USA