Sunday, September 2, 2012

Names Are Not Really Names

"Name" searches on sites that search newspapers and other full-text material often really are not just looking for names.

They are looking for the "first name" near the "last name." How near depends upon the site--sometimes users can specify how "close" the "first name" and the "last name" have to be to each other in order to be a match.

Census indexes, marriage indexes and other databases where the information is actually keyed in as a "name" aren't usually set up as proximity searches.

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