Improved results interface and search features Version: 29 May 2006     [PDF]

The following new features are available on AustLII as of today. We hope you like them. Feedback is welcome and should be sent via AustLII Feedback.

New results display options

The page displaying results of any AustLII search now offers four different methods of display, which the user can choose to use in any order. We suggest that users experiment with the various ways in which search results can be displayed.

• By Relevance – The default results display is by order of likely relevance to the search request, most relevant first. See ‘New search features’ for some Sino changes affecting relevance ranking.
  • The ‘Collapse Multi-sections | Show All Sections’ option makes search results which contain numerous references to legislation more readable by reducing the number of sections of an Act or clauses of a Regulation which are visible. If ‘Collapse Multi-sections’ is chosen, the only items displayed in the search results are the name of the Act or Regulation and the name of the most relevant section or clause. All other sections or clauses found by the search may be displayed by clicking on ‘More results from this legislation’. If ‘Show All Sections’ is chosen, every section or clause is shown and ranked separately.
  
  
• By Date – The results are sorted by date order, most recent date displayed first (ie reverse chronological order). Legislation is displayed by the date the Act was passed or the Regulation made, not by the date on which a particular section or clause was amended.
  • The ‘Collapse Multi-sections | Show All Sections’ option is available here
  
  
• By Title – The results are sorted alphabetically by the title of the document, and displayed from a-z.
  • The ‘Collapse Multi-sections | Show All Sections’ option is available here.
  • The ‘Collapse Title’ option groups the results together based on the first alphanumeric character in the title, that is, ‘A’ to ‘Z’ and then ‘0-9’.
  
  
• By Database – The search results are displayed grouped into the databases on which they are located. The databases are displayed in the order in which they appear in AustLII’s menu structure (not by number of results found in each). To view the results from only one database, click on the number of documents next to the name of the database (Note: to see the results from all databases again, it is necessary to use the ‘back’ button).
  • The ‘Collapse Listing | Expand Listing’ option is only available with the ‘By Database’ display. ‘Collapse Listing’ will first collapse all results into groupings of databases by document type and jurisdiction (eg ‘ New South Wales cases’ or ‘Queensland legislation’). If used again it will collapse the databases into ‘Australian Case Law Databases’, ‘Australian Legislation Databases’ etc. By this means all cases or all legislation can be chosen without use of the ‘Advanced Search’ page. If ‘Expand Listing’ is chosen the process will then be reversed.

Other changes to the results display page

• More visible ‘Repeat search over:’ options – On the right side of the ‘Search’ button on the results page, users have a choice of searches over other collections of data, over which the same search will be executed that has just been executed over the AustLII databases. The options are:
  
  • Legal Publishers – Searches full text of all content on CCH Australia Ltd and displays titles of results; only CCH subscribers can go to the results.
  • Catalog & Websearch – Searches categories in the WorldLII Catalog, and full text of those catalogued web sites accessible to AustLII’s web spiders; takes user to WorldLII results page
  • WorldLII Databases – Searches all databases on the World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) – over 650; takes user to WorldLII results page
  • Law on Google – Converts AustLII search into the correct format for a Google search; adds terms to AustLII search to restrict it to law-related materials only; executes search on Google and takes user to Google results page.
  
  
• ‘Results per page:’ options - Where all search results are displayed, an option on the right side allows users to choose between displaying 10, 20 (default), 50 or 100 results per page.

New search features

AustLII’s Sino search engine has been re-written substantially. The changes in Version 3.0 of Sino will have more effect on those managing databases, but the following aspects will affect all AustLII users.

• The search language is now more compatible with Lexis, Westlaw and Google syntax. Searches like Google style +murder -child etc work as do /10 style Westlaw/QL operators.
  
• Dates now work properly for sorting of results (vital for ‘By Date’ display).
  
• Sino now returns and sorts all results from a search, no matter how many. A previous limit of 20,000 maximum results that could be sorted has been removed.
  
• All words will become searchable (not fully implemented). However, a new smaller list of common words <http://www.austlii.edu.au/austlii/help/sino_common.html> needs to be "quoted" (ie put in double quotes) before they are searchable.
  
• Search times are much faster. However, excessive placing of phrases in quotation marks can lead to very slow results.
  
• Sino handles sorting of results internally (for relevance, date, alpha sorting)

The Sino Manual is available in HTML and PDF.