The Search assistant is a simple search engine, it uses similar search criteria to popular search engines, enabling you to search for Openfile data relating to the Geology of Victoria. This data is managed by the Geological Survey of Victoria (GSV).

Incorporating data from Published and Unpublished Geological Reports, Mine Plans, Maps, Tenement Reports and various other publications that GSV has published or collected and released over its long history

Enter your search criteria into the search bar




Default Operator The default Operator is OR so typing Bore Water in the search bar will return references with the word bore or the word water in the text
Search for an exact word or phrase "search query" Use quotes to search for an exact word or set of words.
This option is handy when searching for company names or a lines from a report. "geological survey"
Synonyms Have been included eg: Searching for Cu will return documents that have the word copper and searching for lignite will also return documents for the phrase "brown coal"
Capital letters. A search for new york times is the same as a search for New York Times.
Exclude words from your search

Put - in front of a word you want to leave out. For example, Stockman -project

Search for an exact match

Put a word or phrase inside quotes. For example, "Stockman project"

Combine searches

Put "OR/AND between each search query. For example, marathon OR race alternatively marathon AND race.

Proximity search

"Bass surrounds" ~3 find all references where the word surrounds is within 3 words of Bass

Query a specific field : Type the field name followed by a colon (:) then the search value
ie: to search for a document with a reference_id of 3456 enter reference_id:3456
Field Names
text: Amalgamation of all fields into one searchable object
reference_id: Identifier from GSV References System reference_id:50407
pubyear: Year of publication ie pubyear:1992 can be used as a range see sample queries below
authors: Authors of the document ie authors:Skladzien , Authors contains Skladzien
Question Search String
Find all references that contain the word groundwater published between 1967 and 1968 text:groundwater AND pubyear:[1967 TO 1968]
Find all references that contain the word groundwater published before 1968 text:groundwater AND pubyear:[* TO 1968]
Find all references that contain the words groundwater and copper text:groundwater AND text:copper
Find all the references that contain the phrase water samples text:"water samples"
Find all the references that contain the phrase water samples but NOT the word gold text:"water samples" -gold
Find all the references that contains Tingate in the authors and were published 2008 authors:tingate AND pubyear:2008
Find all the references that contains Skladzien in the authors and were published in or before 2008 authors:Skladzien AND pubyear:[ * TO 2008]
Find all the references that contains Skladzien in the authors and were published in or before 2008 and do not include cayley in the authors authors:Skladzien AND pubyear:[ * TO 2008] -authors:cayley