· Index terms

The main assistance provided by EIN in searching is the index terms. Trained specialists add index terms to cases or documents in order to help you locate the correct items. The index terms have been separated into categories to help make sense of the growing size of the list. If using the index terms, check the index glossary initially to see which category your index term is in. There is a link to the glossary in the top right of every relevant members page. It will establish what index terms there are, and where they are now located in the index term categories in the search menu (it can be searched for individual words using the CTRL + F buttons for 'find').

Once you have located the index term you want, the category will show on the left hand side. Go back to the search menu, click on the correct category (you can type in a letter and it will 'jump' to the first word that starts with that letter) and the relevant list of index terms will appear in the index term box. Click on the correct index term and press 'select'. The index term will then appear in the 'selected' box. You may also note that some index terms have sub-sets e.g. some countries have specific terms associated with the country (e.g. Falun Gong is a 'sub-set' of China, and S5 is a sub-set of the 1988 Immigration Act). Sub-sets can be selected separately. If you have more than one index term you can use the 'index term operator' to switch between searching for ANY index term (i.e. it will find results where any of your index terms appear) or for ALL index terms (i.e. it will only find results where all of your index terms appear in the one document, which will obviously produce a much smaller set of results).

Remember that an index term search is a 'search restriction'. So it is on the one hand, selective, and on the other it is EXCLUSIVE. As a rule, try both an index term search and a standard word search. For case law there some backlog of indexing of case law this year thanks to site development work (which will be up-to-date as soon as practically possible). It can be useful then to use word searches, but you may wish to restrict the search to say decisions for the last couple of months (where indexing may not be up to date).

· Searching with text

Of great importance for ANY word search, please note that in the new site every 'word' search is a 'sub-string'. The old site had word search options such as ANY or ALL of the words. The new site achieves this and more but in a different way. Every 'word' search is a 'sub-string'. This has the advantage that for many searches a word does not need to be a 'word'. For example typing 'destitut' (without commas) will find words that contain it such 'destitute' or 'destitution'. It also means that a search for 'woman' or 'woman' AND 'Pakistan' can simply be done by typing 'Pakistan wom' because the AND is assumed.

This also means that a search for 'ABDUL' will also find 'ABDULKHALECK' or 'AZIZABDUL' or 'ABDULAHI', and around 10 pages of search results. This can be refined by searching for " ABDUL " using speech marks and a space before and after the word. This will ensure that only instances of 'ABDUL' alone will be found. Similarly, a phrase for example "refugee sur place" in speech marks will find this exact phrase. It is often worth experimenting with this type of search as sometimes using a space either before or after the term you are looking for will produce better results e.g. a search for " DAG" will produce more results if looking for the case of the appellant DAG than searching for " DAG ". (This is because it is specifically searching for spaces and there instances where the appellant's name has a full-stop or a field end which will disrupt searches that are expecting a space there).

TIP: Although the database is sensitive to the slightest variation in letters & numbers, it is not case sensitive, so it makes no difference if you write 00Th02614, pardeePan or PARDEEPAN.

Enter the words 'OR' or 'NOT' to search respectively for ANY of the words or for some words but not others. Enter brackets ( ) to combine search queries; for example, a search for 'Turkey ("prison conditions" OR " house of correction") will in effect be searching for EITHER of these phrases PLUS the word Turkey. The old site could not do an elaborate word search such as this.

· If your search fails to turn up any, or enough, correct results, first of all:-

· Check the spelling of the case name or the accuracy of the bracket number.
· If you are using the advanced searches, check that you have clicked the 'reset form' button if you are altering your search.
· If you have searched using an index term alone, then try entering the index term or similar in the text box instead, without selecting the index term(s)
· Above all, remember that an electronic search identifies exact matches, like a fingerprint. So even a comma, a space or a forward slash in the wrong place can frustrate the search.

The main point is just to practice carrying out your own searches; feel free to make plenty of mistakes because they are usually instructive especially if you can decipher why the case results are either as they are and/or not what you wanted or expected. Database searching on this scale is more of an art than a science, so

Not every document you may want is in the EIN database, but often, it is human error that thwarts a search, with too many or no results, or results swamped with spurious references. For example a search for 'turkey' can have dietary