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Council Documents: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)
- What are 'intelligent links'?
- What is indexed by this system?
- What does 'combined/search hits' mean?
- Why are word with hit counts of 99999 ignored?
- Why are some word counts zero?
- What does the 'optimise' search do?
- Why are the words in the search results list in a different order to how I keyed them in?
- Can I do a 'wild card' search?
- How many minutes are held within the system?
- Why are some of my search words truncated?
- Why has the 's' at the end of some words been removed?
- Why are the words in the search results all in lower case?
- How do I find references to road numbers in the system?
- Why are my search words not highlighted when I look at a particular minute or report?
- How can I see the latest minutes?
- How can I look at the minutes of a particular committee?
- Who wrote this system?
- Why doesn't the minute from the search hits list contain the search words?
- Why do some minutes have the message 'Minute not available'?
topWhat is indexed by this system?
The current version of this system holds an index of each word that occurs within the minutes and reports stored in the system. Rather than hold each and every long word, the system truncates all long words to the first eight characters. This means that the two words 'engineers' and 'engineering' will both be indexed together under 'engineer'.
Once the 'wild card' facility has been implemented, the system will be modified to store words of any length.
The current version ignores any word of one or two character as well as words that contain numbers suchs 'M25'.
topWhat does 'combined/search hits' mean?
On the search page, the column entitled "combined/search hits" displays the number of minutes or reports that contain that word AND all the other words above it in the list for the years being searched.
topWhy are word with hit counts of 99999 ignored?
If the system comes across a word that is either two or less characters long, then that word is considered to be a common word and is not indexed. Certain other very common words such as 'the' and 'was' are also not indexed.
All of these 'common words' are given a hit count of 99999. When the search system comes across a word with a hit count of 99999, it knows it is a common word that is likely to occur in virtually every minute or report and so ignores it.
topWhy are some word counts zero?
When a word has a "total hits for that word" of zero, it means that that particular word does not exist anywhere within any of the documents indexed by the system.
Because the minutes indexed within this system are written in British English, American spellings will probably not be recognised. Another common reason for getting a zero word count is that the word contains a typing or spelling error.
topWhat does the 'optimise' search do?
The optimise search feature re-orders the words being searched so that the system looks at the least common words first. By doing this it cuts down the amount of processing the server has to do and therefore reduces the time taken to display the search results.
This optimised 'least number of hits' order will usually speed up the search by over 500%.
topWhy are the words in the search results list in a different order to how I keyed them in?
If the 'optimise' box has been clicked, then the system will sort the search words into a different order. This will be in 'least number of hits' order which in many cases will speed up the search by over 500%.
topWhat are 'intelligent links'?
Often within minutes and reports there are references to an earlier minute or report. This system includes a module that is able to identify these references and convert them into links to the appropriate document.
Because this unique feature of this system uses a form of artificial intelligence, the resultant links have been called 'intelligent links'.
Often these references are to documents in a completely different volume (year). Without these intelligent links, it would be an extremely time consuming exercise to look up these references.
An example of an 'intelligent link' can be seen in this minute.
topCan I do a 'wild card' search?
This feature is not currently available. It is planned to be implemented in the next release of the system.
topHow many minutes/reports are held within the system?
The easiest way to file out the number of minutes currently held for a particular year is to look at the volume index for that particular year. Every minute has a top menu item called volume that will list all the minutes for that year (volume).
Because this prototype system has a fixed number of minutes within it, the number of minutes stored for each year are as follows:
Council documents held with this system:
Year Agendas & Reports Minutes 2001/2002 Volume 29 Volume 29 2000/2001 Volume 28 Volume 28 - (675 minutes) 1999/2000 Volume 27 Volume 27 - (1537 minutes) 1998/1999 Volume 26 Volume 26 - (1451 minutes) 1997/1998 Volume 25 Volume 25 - (1588 minutes)
topWhy are some of my search words truncated?
There are two main reasons why search words are truncated:
- When this system was first produced, the initial word index was limited to 64K different words. The truncating of long words to eight characters was to ensure that the 64K limits was not exceeded. The system has now been modified and the 64K limit removed. A future release will remove word truncation.
- This version of the system does not allow 'wild cards'. This means that it is not possible to do searches such as engineer*. The truncation of search words helps overcomes this limitation.
topWhy has the 's' at the end of words been removed?
Because the system assumes that the 's' at the end of a word is to make the word a plural, the system igores any trailing 's'.
topWhy are the words in the search results all in lower case?
The system converts all the text within a document to lower case before it starts to index it. All search words are therefore also converted to lower case at the start of each search.
topHow do I find references to road numbers in the system?
The current version of the system ignores all non-alphabetic characters within any of its documents. It therefore will not index any references to text such as 'M25'.
This limitation will be removed in a future version of the system.
topWhy are my search words not highlighted when I look at a particular minute or report?
This feature only works when you view a minute or report from the search results page.
topHow can I see the latest minutes?
There are two easy ways to see the latest minutes available within this system. The system automatically generates two separate lists for each year (volume).
The first and smaller list shows details of all committee meetings. Every minute has a top menu item called committee that lists all the committees (meetings) for that year (volume).
The second and much large list shows the details of every minute that has been indexed for that particular year. Every minute has a top menu item called volume that lists all the minutes for that year (volume). Because of the size of this list, it may take some time to completely load the page.
topHow can I look at the minutes of a particular committee?
The system automatically generates a list of all the committee meetings for a particular year. By look at this list you can get to any particular meeting. Every minute has a top menu item called committee that will list the meetings for that particular year.
topWhy do some minutes have the message 'Minute not available'?
When older volumes are added to the system, some documents are no longer available. When this happens, the system automatically generates dummy minute pages so that there are no 'broken links'.
topWhy doesn't the minute from the search hits list contain the search words?
The system automatically generates all the individual minute web pages as it indexes each minute. All minutes should have unique numbers by unfortunately, because of human error, there are a few duplicates. An example of this are the minutes for the two meetings:
Community Services - 15/01/98
Planning and Transportation - 14/01/98The Community Services meeting contains minutes V25-1257 to V25-1278.
The Planning and Transportation meeting contains minutes V25-1261 to V25-1281.
The 22 minutes V25-1257 to V25-1278 are duplicated and unfortunately the Planning and Transportation minute web pages have overwritten the earlier ones with the same name.
Thus, for example, a search for 'dogs on beach byelaw' will produce hits for the minutes:
hit minute date committee minute heading 1 V25-1274 15/01/98 Community Services DOG BAN BYELAW CONSULTATION 2 V25-932 30/10/97 Policy and Resources DOG BAN BYELAW - BEACH SOUTH OF CLAREMONT PIER If you look at V25-1274 you will see the correctly numbered dupicate minute for the Planning and Transportation Committee!
The Oultwood team is currently working on a patch that will identify and fix this type of problem.
topWho wrote this system?
The system has been developed by
Oultwood is well known for its Local Government Index which is probably the best index to council and community websites on the internet.
You can contact Oultwood by email at minutes@oultwood.com.
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