Search Hints

• Quick Search
• Use the quick search for single terms or Boolean AND searches.
• The quick search includes terms from the title, description, subject, geographical area, and cultural group.
• The search incorporates parts of words. For example, 'math' will retrieve all records that contain 'mathematics' and 'ethnomathematics.'
• Advanced Search
• You may use one or more of the fields for searching. We suggest you use only two or three fields in combination, as each field selected acts as a Boolean AND - that is, the terms in all selected fields must be present for a resource to be retrieved.
• Use the subject field for mathematical, educational, and cultural terms assigned as subject headings.
• Use the geographical area field for states, countries, and regions. Names of cities are not included.
• Use the cultural group field for names of national, ethnic, indigenous, and tribal groups.
• Select "teaching resources only" in the resource type field to limit your search to student classroom activities, lesson plans, course outlines, and similar educational materials.
• Use the keyword field for other terms that do not appear under subject, geographical area, or cultural group.
• Expanding Your Search
• If you have performed a keyword search that didn't return many records, try one synonym at a time in the keyword field, as there is no Boolean OR function as yet.
• Use broader subject terms. Our subject headings appear in alphabetical order in the browse function, but are actually hierachical. Locate the subject headings connected with a relevant record and try browsing by a broader term. Taxonomy used is hierarchical and can be found at www.ethnomath.org/search/taxonomy.pdf
• If you have tried browsing the subject list with few results, try entering that same term in a keyword search. Sometimes articles have information on a topic but it is not a main focus, so it won't be included in the subject headings.
• Try a modified spelling of the word. Our collection includes information from all over the world and spellings may differ from place to place. Some words have more than one accepted spelling, for example, the Chokwe of Africa can also be spelled Tchokwe and Tschokwe.
• Try the National Science Digital Library (NSDL). The NSDL includes our records as well as records from many other digital libraries. The NSDL also indexes some documents in full, so keyword searches may produce more results.
• For additional information on the cataloging and taxonomy format used for the EDL, go to www.ethnomath.org/search/metadata-tagging.pdf