The Wisconsin Legislature generates thousands of documents, making it difficult to comb through every collection point to find needed information. using the legislature Web site can accelerate and narrow the search process.
Vol. 77, No. 12, December
2004
Quick Links
Folio Searching
Folio is the searchable interface for the different databases located
at folio.legis.state.wi.us. Using Folio can be a little tricky. Here are
a few tips to get you started:
- The default search is an AND operator between words. A search for
air pollution (no quotes) would return a list of documents that
contained both the word air and the word pollution.
- Double quotes (" ") can be used to search for a phrase. Searching
for "air pollution" would return only documents that contain that
phrase.
- For a broader search, use the OR operator. A search for air OR
pollution would return documents containing either the word air
or the word pollution.
- The NOT operator is used when you want to search for documents in
which one word appears but not the other. A search for pollution NOT air
would provide you with documents that have the word pollution but
not the word air.
- Proximity searching allows you to specify how close together two
words must be. Folio supports three different proximity searches (note
that you need to include the quotes):
1) "air pollution"#2 gives you all documents in which the word air
occurs within two records of the word pollution
2) "air pollution"@5 gives you all documents in which the word air
occurs within five words of the word pollution
3) "air pollution"/5 gives you all documents in which the word air
occurs within five words before the word pollution.
Wisconsin Lawyer
