Email and phone search

Searching University Documents

The University-wide web search engine allows users both within the University and elsewhere to search for information on over 650 more-or-less "official" web servers operated by the University. Most documents on University web servers are freely available to everyone, however some are only intended for use within the University and access to these is restricted in various ways. The search engine maintains two separate indexes:

• one listing public documents, and
• one listing both public documents and documents available only within the University

By default, searches by people using computers connected to the University's data network will use the index that includes restricted material, whereas searches from computers outside the University's network will use the index that lists only public documents.

Search and results pages include a link allowing the alternative index to be searched. Users of computers not connected to the University's data network will be required to identify themselves using the University's Raven service before they can access the index that includes restricted documents - see 'How do I get a Raven password? for further details. Having selected a particular index, subsequent searches during the same browser session will use that index unless the other is explicitly re-selected.

Some documents cannot be accessed by the search engine itself and so do not appear in either index. Such documents are typically restricted to particular departments or colleges, or are password protected even when accessed from within the University network. Conversely, some documents may appear in one or both of the indexes but may not be accessible under particular circumstances. This is most likely to be a problem when using the index including restricted documents from outside the University.

A computer that is actually connected to the University network may (rarely) be treated as external, and so will search the public index by default. That is most likely to happen if the computer is using a newly-allocated address, or if the address being used is incorrect or not properly registered. In the former case, the situation should rectify itself within a day or two. If the problem persists then local computing support staff will need to check that the correct address is being used, and that it is properly registered.

Some features of the Web Search service use browser cookies. Features that require cookies include all authenticated accesses, and the ability to use an index other than the one chosen by default. To use these features browsers must accept cookies from the host 'web-search.cam.ac.uk'. These cookies contain information used to manage searching, and will be deleted when you quit your web browser.

If you come across unexpected results or experience other difficulties with searching then please contact webmaster@ucs.cam.ac.uk for assistance.

The title of this document is: Searching University Documents
URL: http://www.cam.ac.uk/global/search/search