How to search LBT

Simple searches

You can use the MediaWiki Search box on any LBT page to do a simple search.

Categories and Properties

LBT has a number of extra features behind the scenes which allow complex searches to be made. For example, you could use the Semantic MediaWiki search to find all female bookbinders working between 1700 and 1750 with parents who were also book binders.

You can look at the list of available categories for complex searches here: Special:Categories. If you click on one of these categories, it will create a display of all the records which are tagged with that category.

You can do the same with Special:Properties but most of these don’t produce useful output when clicked on their own.

Semantic searches

LBT is built using Semantic MediaWiki which means that complex searches can be constructed using these Categories and Properties. You can see some examples of this on the page Query. You will see that creating the instructions for these searches and their output is somewhat complicated.

In fact, only logged-in LBT editors are able to create pages like this. However, ordinary users are able to use a special search page without being logged in: Special:Ask. screenshot from Special:Ask

We will now explain how to use this page to build moderately complicated searches.