- What is an Author Search?
- This search performs a truncated search on a part of an author's name. Last name (or part thereof) first, then first name (or part thereof), if known. Separate last name, first name with a comma, space. This search retrieves citations and abstracts from all authors whose names begin with the letters supplied.
- What is a Multiple Author Search?
- Select one or more authors from the author list. This search retrieves citations and abstracts regardless of authoring status, i.e., principal or secondary authorship. Logical operators AND or OR may be selected to combine multiple authors.
- What is an Author List?
- Choose one author from the complete author list. This search retrieves all citations by that author regardless of authoring status, i.e., principal or secondary authorship. Check for multiple occurrences of the same author due to the use or lack of middle initials and hyphenated names.
- What is a Title Search?
- Supply title terms to search the title field. This search uses logical operators.
- What is a Title List?
- Choose one title from the title list. Retrieve that citation including abstract. The list begins with special characters and dates, then the order is alphabetical. Alphabetical order includes the articles 'A', 'An' and, 'The'.
- What is a Source Search?
- Supply search terms to search the citation sources. This search retrieves all citations published by each source that includes the selected terms in its title. This search uses logical operators. Citation sources may include journal titles, monograph titles, conference names, corporate bodies and institutional names, dissertations, theses, etc.
- What is a Source List?
- Choose a source (e.g., a specific journal, monograph, conference names, or corporate body or institutional name) from the list of citation sources. This search retrieves all citations published by the selected source.
- What is a Keyword Search?
- Choose one or more keywords from an alphabetical list and retrieve all citations that were assigned the specified keywords. Keywords (subject topics) are assigned by NLS staff to group the citations by topic. Because new keywords may be added to the list and assignment is somewhat subjective, this search may return a different list of citations than the abstract search. You may use this list to browse the complete keyword list. This form may take up to 3 minutes to load.
- What is a Cohort Search?
- Select one or more cohorts and retrieve all citations associated with those cohorts. Logical operators AND or OR may be selected to combine multiple cohorts. Results may be numerous.
- What is a Format Search?
- Select one or more formats of publication and retrieve all citations appearing in those formats. This search performs the equivalent of the logical OR. Results are sorted by principal author and may be numerous. Formats include the following \"Full text, on-line\", \"In-progress Research\", \"Journal Article\", \"Master's Thesis\", \"Monograph or Chapter\", \"Newspaper\", \"Oral Presentation, Conference\", \"Ph.D. Dissertation\", \"Report\", and \"Working Paper\".
- What is a Year Search?
- Select one or more years of publication and retrieve all citations published in those years. This search performs the equivalent of the logical OR. Results are sorted by principal author and may be numerous.
- What is an Abstract Search?
- This search allows the user to supply terms to search the abstract fields of the citations. Not all citations contain abstracts. This search can be useful if the term supplied does not exist as a keyword (e.g., \"policy\") or if a keyword has not been assigned to a citation. Some keywords have been added more recently than others and were not retrospectively assigned to the then existing citations.
- What is a Full-Text Search?
- This search allows the user to search for text in any of the citation text fields: titles, abstracts and keywords. New terms often appear in titles or abstracts before they are indexed as keywords.
- What is an Advanced Search?
- This search allows the user to combine many of the above search types to form a complex search strategy. The searches that may be combined are the following: \"Author List\" (one author only), \"Format Search\" (one format only), \"Keyword Search\" (one keyword only), \"Cohort Search\" (one cohort only), \"Year Search\" (one year only), \"Title Search\" (supply terms), \"Citation Search\" (supply terms).
The search types not included in the advanced strategy are: "Author Search" (truncated name search), "Multiple Author Search", "Source List", "Title List" and "Abstract Search".