How to Use the World Bank Search

Contents

• Entering the Search
• Understanding Your Results
• More Search Options
• Examples

Entering the Search

Tip   Stop and think about what precisely you are looking for. Be specific. Enter more than one word if you can. See the simple search example below to see what we mean.

Tip  If all the words you are entering together form a name or phrase, like "United Nations" or "water treatement", then click on the link, more search options, and select this exact phrase from the options beside the word matching.

When you are ready, click on the red Search button to the right of the field. The search engine will try to return documents from the World Bank and related sites that contain your search words.

Note  This search does not look in either the Jolis catalog or World Development Sources. To search these, click on the appropriate link on the right of the search page under Other Resources.

Understanding Your Results

If you see a percent score to the left of each title, then the list begins with the best matches at the top. If this number is below, say, 50%, then no exact match was found though you may still be interested in what was found.

If you don't see a percent score to the left of each title, then you picked a matching option that can't list best matches first. If your search also returned a lot of documents, more than you care to hunt through, then you should add more search words and try again. This will narrow your search.

To view a document listed in your results, click on its title.

The best matches will be listed first. Which are judged best depends on whether your search words appeared in the title and on how many appeared in the entire text.

Clicking on the link, Show Top Lines, will provide the first few lines of a document below its title and may help you decide whether it is what you are looking for.

If you don't see what your are looking for, then click on the link, more options, at the top of the results page.

More Search Options

Just like in the simple search, you enter your word or words in the search box at top. In addition, though, you can select options from the menus below to better describe how you want your search to be carried out.

Here are the options for each menu and what those options do.

Return...

• all available information This will search all documents from the World Bank, related sites, World Bank publications and World Bank Project summaries.
• World Bank publications Select this option if you are looking only for World Bank publications.
• World Bank projects Select this option if you are looking only for brief summaries of World Bank projects.

matching...

• this exact phrase If you choose this option, then the search will treat your words as though you put them in quotes. If a document contains all the words you entered and they appear side by side and in the order you entered, then it will be listed with the other documents found.
  Tip   If you wanted to place your words together inside quotation marks, then use this option instead.
• all these words All the search words you enter have to appear in a document before it will be listed with the results of your search. The documents found will not be listed so that the best matches appear first.
  A confession: This option really does the same thing as the option, this "and/or" expression, below.
• any of these terms If a document contains any of your search words, it will be in the result set. If it only contains related words, then it will not.
• any related terms The search will also look for words related to any you entered. A search on "cattle" will also return documents that contain only the words "cows" or "bovine".
• this "and/or" expression Use this when your search words include either "and" or "or".
  Tip  If you know what a Boolean search is and want to enter one, then choose this option. The documents found will not be listed so that the best matches appear first.

in...

• text or title Your search words can appear anywhere in a document and it will be returned to you as a match.
• title only Only documents that contain your search words in their title will be returned.

Examples

A Simple Search