The Order of Search Results - Alphabetical Indexes

Not surpringly, alphabetical search indexes return your search results ordered alphabetically. So, if I choose a Title - Alphabetical search for minority report, I will see a list of results that are alphabetically close to my search term. In this case, I see results such as Minority report, The minority report and other stories, and Minority vendors.

When sorting results, our catalog ignores the first word if it is a definite or indefinite article. This includes words such as a, an, and the. Thus, in the example above, our catalog ignores the the in The minority report and other stories and instead alphabtizes this resource by the next word, minority. The catalog also ignores any initial articles in the search query. As a result, searching for minority report and the minority report returns the same results.

Quirk Alert: Normally, ignoring the first word if it is an article doesn't create a problem for the searcher. However, let's say you are searching for a book about the letter A called A Book. Since A is referring to the letter A, it isn't an article. However, our catalog isn't smart enough to realize this so if you try searching for a book, it will return results for book. The easiest way to fix this when searching is to place another article in front of your search like this. Our catalog only ignores the first word it sees so adding two articles in front gives us our desired result.