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• For New Users
  If you have never used an Internet search engine before, or at least never used the SINO search engine before, this simple overview will help to get you started.

• For Regular Users
  If you have used the SINO search engine before, the advanced tips should have what you need, or you may just want to check the Search Operators Chart.

A search engine is a computer program that presents you with a list of documents that match the criteria which you specify. You specify the criteria in the form of show me all documents that have the words X, Y and Z in them. You can narrow the criteria, for example: show me documents from Western Australia with the words X, Y and Z in them.

PacLII utilises the SINO search engine. If you have never used an Internet search engine before, you can have SINO do most of the work for you.

The important thing to note is that the SINO search engine will return to you a list of documents that contain the words (or phrases) that you specify. Therefore you must choose your search words carefully. The best words (or phrases) to choose are those which are unique or particularly distinctive and are, of course, relevant to the subject matter of your query.

The SINO search engine will relevance rank the results, which means that the best matches will appear at the top of the list. You will obtain the best results when searching for unique or distinctive words or phrases.

An easy way to search the PacLII site is to use the Standard Search Form which is accessed from the PacLII home page (or the PITS home page if you are searching for treaties). The Standard Search Form uses predefined search methods to assist casual users. Simply enter search terms and operators in the search window and click on the 'Search' button to start the search. Note that the Standard Search Form accessed from the PITS home page limits searches to the PITS database.

PacLII also provides a Full Search Form which enables users to narrow their search. After choosing the unique or distinctive words for which you wish to search, type them into the Full Search Form. Now decide which of the following search types you want to use:

• using autosearch (the default search type);
• any of these words (this will return the most results);
• all of these words;
• this phrase (ie in the exact order as typed);
• this document title;
• this piece of legislation (ie an Act or Regulation name); or
• this Boolean query.

Make your selection on the search form. If you do not make a selection, autosearch will be used.

Finally, decide whether you wish to search over all of the PacLII databases, an individual database or a group of related databases (eg PacLII: All Case Law Databases or PITS - Treaties in English) and then make your selection(s) from the database list.

When ready, press Search. A list of documents will be returned to you. You can use Back on your browser to return to the search screen in order to refine your search.

The search options 'using autosearch' and 'this Boolean query' are explained below.

Using Autosearch

If you choose the "using autosearch" option, you do not have to specify what type of search you want to carry out. The SINO search engine will analyse the words for which you are searching and attempt to apply the correct search type for you.

• Boolean search
  Autosearch will recognise a boolean search by the presence of boolean operators in the words for which you are searching. So, if you use and, or, near, w/10 etc, then autosearch will automatically treat the search as a Boolean search. If you do not want these words to be treated as boolean operators, you must put the phrase of which they are part in double quotation marks (ie "dogs and cats" and not dogs and cats)

• Section of an Act search
  Autosearch will recognise a search which contains any of section 14 of the Privacy Act 1988, Privacy Act 1988, s14 and s14 Spam Act 2003 as a search for a specific section of an Act of Parliament. Note that you must include the year of the Act for this to work.

• Case name search
  Autosearch will recognise a search which contains v, v., vs, vs. or re as a search for a case name. The search results will be restricted to documents (usually cases or casenotes) containing the phrases on either side of these identifiers, or immediately after the re. So, for example, the following searches all work: Mabo v Queensland, Queensland vs Mabo, Lenah v Australian Broadcasting, Broadcasting Corporation vs Lenah, Re Smith, and In re Smith.

• Single phrase search
  Autosearch will recognise words enclosed in double quotation marks as a phrase search. So the words "cats and dogs" enclosed in double quotation marks will trigger a phrase search. Note that Autosearch can only deal with a single phrase in double quotation marks. If you want to search for two or more phrases, you will need to use a Boolean search instead.

Unless autosearch recognises your search as one of the above searches, it will default the search type to an any of these words search. Do not forget that you can override autosearch by explicitly choosing another search type.

If you have used one of the popular online legal database systems (or even if you haven't) you probably do not need to learn anything new. Most Lexis, Status, Info-One, (and for the non-lawyers, even C and agrep) style searches are recognised. See Emulated Search Languages for more information.

When you do a SINO search, you are searching for documents which contain some words or phrases. If you can come up with a phrase which you think is distinctive enough, just type it in, set the search method to this Boolean query and hit the ENTER key. This will find all the documents containing the exact phrase you have entered. If you want to find documents with more than one word or phrase, you use the Boolean operators.

If you want more than one phrase or word to appear in the retrieved documents, put an and between them. For example, to find documents containing the phrase moral rights as well as the word copyright, you would type: moral rights and copyright.

If, on the other hand, you want to find one term and/or another one, put an or between them. For example, to find documents which contain the words treaty, convention or international agreement you would type: treaty or convention or international agreement. If you wanted to, you could even put these two searches together - as in: treaty or convention or international agreement and moral rights and copyright.

If you want to find two words or phrases which appear close to each other (for example, the parties to a case), you can use the near operator. If you wanted to find cases where Smith sued (or was sued by) Brown, you would type: smith near brown.

For more in-depth information see the full SINO documentation or the Search Operators Chart and Common Words List (words that are not searchable).

Results Display Options

PacLII offers 4 different methods of displaying the results of any search. These are:

• By Relevance – The default results display is by order of likely relevance to the search request, most relevant first.
  

• 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.
  

• By Title – The results are sorted alphabetically by the title of the document, and displayed from a-z.
  • 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 PacLII’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 ‘Supreme Court of Vanuatu’ or ‘Court of Appeal of Vanuatu’). If used again it will collapse the databases into ‘Vanuatu Case Law’ etc. By doing this, all cases or all legislation can be chosen without use of the ‘Full Search Form’. If ‘Expand Listing’ is chosen the process will then be reversed.

The default setting displays 50 results per page. A button on the right hand side of the displayed results allows users to choose between displaying 10, 20, 50 (default) or 100 results per page.

On the right side of the ‘Search’ button on the results page, users have options of conducting the same search that has just been executed over the PacLII database over other collections of data. The options are:

• All PacLII Databases - Searches accross all PacLII databases.

• Catalog & Websearch – Searches categories in the WorldLII Catalog, and full text of those catalogued web sites accessible to PacLII’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 PacLII search into the correct format for a Google search; adds terms to PacLII search to restrict it to law-related materials only; executes search on Google and takes user to Google results page.

More Information

For more information on:

• boolean operators, see the Search Operators Chart;

• words that cannot be searched for, see the Common Words List;

• SINO, see the Full SINO Documentation;

• searching for cases, see the Case Law Help;

• searching for legislation, see the Legislation Help.