General Tips |
| Capitalization |
The search system is not case-sensitive. You can use upper or lower case letters without changing your search results. For example, the following three are equivalent:
Medicare
medicare
meDiCAre
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| Truncation & Wild Cards |
You can use the percent symbol (%) to represent zero or more characters. This can be useful when you are looking for something that may have spelling variants or for words that start with the same stem. For example: |
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Enter |
To find |
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Anders%n |
Anderson
Andersen |
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record% |
record
records
recording |
| Boolean |
The search system does not support direct boolean searching using AND, OR, and NOT to combine terms. The author/title search automatically combines words with AND. The subject search allows you to combine up to three subject concepts with AND or OR selected from a menu.
The plus (+) and minus (-) symbols which are used for Boolean searching by web search engines like Google are also not available in this search system.
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| Phrase Searching |
Phrases can be entered directly in the subject search system. Do not use quotation marks (") to enclose the phrase.
Phrase searching is not available in the author/title search. Instead, each word entered is combined automatically using AND, so the words may appear in the author line (or title line) in any order.
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| Health Information |
This database is not focused on general health information. A few health topics are included as they relate to providing health services in rural areas.
For consumer health information, you may want to try the National Library of Medicines MEDLINEplus or the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' healthfinder.
Health professionals may want to consult the National Library of Medicine's PubMed for access to MEDLINE.
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Subject Search Tips |
| Selecting Terms |
You can enter up to three different concepts on the subject search page. The search system will attempt to match these up against a set of indexing terms that describe each document. The system will find you an indexing term that exactly matches what you entered, ask you to select from a set of possible matches, or tell you that no terms match what you entered.
Here are some examples of the subject selection process:
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You enter: |
Search selection response: |
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TANF |
You are pointed to the database's preferred term,
Welfare
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Clinics |
You are asked to select the best match from a set of terms including Clinics, Rural Health Clinics, School-based Health Clinics, and more. |
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Hepatitis |
You are told that no subjects match hepatitis and are given the option to do a fulltext search of this term, in case it appears in any document titles or abstracts. |
| Combining Terms |
You can select AND or OR to combine terms.
AND will find only documents that include both terms, so using AND will result in fewer documents matched.
OR will find documents that match either term, so using OR will result in more documents matched.
The first two terms entered are combined first, regardless of whether you use AND or OR. Then the third term is combined with the first set. You may need to vary the order in which you enter terms if you are combining AND and OR in one search.
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You enter: |
Elderly or Women and Caregivers |
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Searched as: |
((Elderly or Women) and Caregivers) |
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You enter: |
Women and Caregivers or Elderly |
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Searched as: |
((Women and Caregivers) or Elderly) |
| Not finding what you want? |
The more terms you combine together, the more likely that there will not be any matches. You may want to consider entering just the term that is most important to you or using broader terms rather than more specific ones.
Because the database is focused on rural, it is not usually necessary or appropriate to use "rural" as a search term. An exception to that would be a specific focus like "rural-urban differences" or "rural health clinics."
This database is not focused on general health information. A few health topics are included as they relate to providing health services in rural areas. For consumer health information, you may want to try the National Library of Medicines MEDLINEplus or the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' healthfinder. Health professionals may want to consult the National Library of Medicine's PubMed for access to MEDLINE.
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Author Search Tips |
| Name Format |
Whenever possible, we enter the full first name of the author and any middle initial that is provided. We do not include titles or degrees in the name.
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| Name Order |
You can enter the first and last name in any order. Do not separate names with a comma. For example, the following are equivalent:
Doe John
John Doe
Each part of the name is searched separately, so you may end up with matches where the first name matches one author's name and the last name matches a different author.
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| Combining Author Names |
You can enter multiple author names. Do not use AND between names or commas to separate them. For example, to search for documents by both Jane Smith and John Doe, enter:
smith doe
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| Punctuation |
Do not use commas to separate names.
Apostrophes (') that are part of the name can be included. For example, enter O'Hare with the apostrophe.
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Title Search Tips |
| Word Order |
Enter words from the title in any order. Do not use AND to combine words. For example, the following are equivalent:
directory state offices
state offices directory
Exact phrase matching is not available.
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| Punctuation |
Punctuation that is part of the title can be included. For example, if the title includes the phrase rural-urban you can enter:
rural-urban
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