Connecting-Africa

Help

Search help
Connecting-Africa can be searched for experts, publications, organisations, or all databases together. Alternatively, if you don't enter a search string a list of all records will be presented.

The default Find "all" choice retrieves records from all 3 databases. For example, entering 'Africa' in the search box will find all experts, publications, and organisations that contain the text 'Africa'. To restrict your search to a specific database click on Find "experts", "publications" or "organisations".

By default searches are made by looking for "Whole word(s)". So typing 'African Women' (without quotes) finds only records with both words.
Choose "Exact phrase" in the menu to look for whole text strings rather than words. The advantage of this is that records can be found even if you don't know the exact spelling by typing the part of the word or words you do know. Also this way records can be found that have typing mistakes made in the repository of origin. If you enter more than one word in the search box with "Exact phrase" chosen, this will retrieve records that contain this exact string. For example, entering 'Kenyan women' in the search box will find records that contain this complete string: 'Kenyan women'.

Search tips

Word Variations:
Choose "Exact phrase" in the menu and use a word stem to find variations on the word, e.g., searching for 'civ' will match civ, civil, civic, civilization, and civilian.
Capitalization:
Capitalization is ignored by default, so 'Consequence' and 'consequence' are equal. But if you check the box "Match case" capitalization is taken into the search, so looking for 'Consequence' with Match case on will find 'Consequence' only.

Search results
When you find a publication record in Connecting-Africa, you can click on the link below "Full text" to access the web page of the record in the original repository. Connecting-Africa relies on the content of the repositories it harvests whether this web page really contains a link to the full text.

Search possibilities in each specific database

Experts:
Use this part to search for all Africa experts in Connecting-Africa. Choose an option from the drop-down menu:
Last name: Select this if you are searching for a specific expert.
Geographic expertise: Select this if you are searching for an expert who specializes in a specific country or region.
Thematic expertise: Select this if you are searching for an expert with specific thematic expertise.
MDG expertise: Select this if you are searching for an expert with specific expertise on one or more of the Millennium Development Goals.
Profession: Select this if you want to browse a specific expert group, like Policy maker, Development practitioner, Scientist / researcher, etc.
Description: Select this if you want to search in the descriptions only.
All fields: Select this if you want to search the whole record.
Publications:
Search for bibliographic information and digital resources (books, articles, audio files, images, etc) available in repositories from all over the world. Choose an option from the drop-down menu:
Title: Select this if you want to search the titles of books, articles, journals, audio or video files.
Author/Contributor: Select this if you are searching for a specific author, creator, or contributor.
Abstract: Select this if you want to search the whole record.
Subject: Select this if you want to search in the abstracts only.
All fields: Select this if you want to search the whole record.
Organisations:
Search for details of organisations or institutes involved in African studies or African projects. Choose an option from the drop-down menu:
Name: Select this if you are searching for a specific organisation.
City: Select this if you want to search for organisations by location.
Kind: Select this if you want to search for organisations by kind. There are 8 kinds of organisations: Research organisation, Non-governmental development organisation, Other NGO, Government institution, Embassy, Private enterprise, Consultant, and Miscellaneous.
All fields: Select this if you want to search the whole record.