My other problem is that I wasn't specifying the range correctly.  It seems that the range must be specified in the clvN field exactly in the  'yyyymm-yyyymm' format.  Something I learned in asking through the website support is that it is possible to add a more flexible range by adding it to the ebscohostkeywords field as 'DT+' and then the range.  Doing it that way I was able to use '1999-' as the range and it worked just fine.  I'm guessing it could be added to the actual search terms as well as long as there is an 'AND' between the range and the actual query.

Joel

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Gorrell
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 8:39 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Limit EBSCO Search Box Builder by date

Hi Joel,

We're updating our documentation/the Search Box Builder site to also include
these parameters.

Search Box Builder - a form to take in the user's query/limiters/etc is
essentially a way to build up what we call a persistent link.  Our link
syntax has a few basic parameters.  Look at this search for "football" from
the Academic Search Premier database (db code "aph"):

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&bquery=(football)&
cli0=FT&clv0=Y&cli1=DT1&clv1=200901-200911&type=0&site=ehost-live

I've got 2 limiters in this search - Full Text and Date (200901-200911).

Our limiters are passed through cli{N} and cliv{N} key/value pairs.

So in the above - FT is the "key" for the full text limiter, and it's
"Value" is Y.  For date, DT1 is the key and the date range 200901-200911 is
the value.

Other limiters that might be used would be Peer Reviewed (RV=Y) or
References Available (FR=Y) or Publication/Source (SO="value").  These are
our Search Tags.  Note - that if you want to play around and see what the
URL looks like, you can use the UI, and click on the "Alert/Save/Share" link
- we show a permalink on the little popup - this (basically) is the same
persistent link you would build up through Search Box Builder.

I hope that makes sense.  If you have further questions, feel free to
contact our support team - [log in to unmask]

Thanks for pointing out this weakness in our documentation - and thanks for
using the feature!

-mdg
-----
Michael Gorrell, [log in to unmask]
Senior VP and CIO
EBSCO


On 11/17/09 3:11 PM, "Joel Marchesoni" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
> 
> One feature missing from the EBSCO Search Box Builder is the ability to limit
> by date.  Does anyone know of a way to do this from the search box code?  I
> tried all the values from the results page with no success.
> 
> I'm having a hard time finding any information about this online and was
> hoping a fellow coder has figured it out already.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Joel