Search Tips

To conduct "and" searches (e.g., to retrieve records that contain pregnancy and prenatal in a particular field), enter both terms in the search field.

To conduct "or" searches (e.g., to retrieve records that contain either pregnancy or prenatal, but not necessarily both, in a particular field), it is necessary to search twice, once for each term.

Choose the most unusual words, if possible (not health!).

If you are searching for a term that has varied endings, the term may be truncated by typing in the beginning of the word followed by an asterisk. For example, for materials on adolescents, typing adolescen* will retrieve records using both adolescents and adolescence.

To match an exact phrase, enclose it in quotation marks. For example,"special health needs" matches children with special health needs and the special health needs of pregnant women with disabilities but not children with special health care needs or special needs of newborns.

The database search engine is not case sensitive. For example, searches for WIC and wic yield the same records.

The order of the words is unimportant. Searching for public health yields public health programs and health services for the public, but not public private partnerships (because there is no health).

You may also search using these special characters:

• @ matches one arbitrary character (e.g., wom@n matches woman and women)
• * matches zero or more arbitrary characters (e.g.,*feeding matches feeding disorders and breastfeeding)
• = forces the words to be an exact match (e.g.,=nutrition matches nutrition and nutrition assessment, but not nutritionists or nutritional requirements)

If a search finds too many records, redo it with additional terms. For example, add a population type (e.g., adolescents) or another subject term in the keyword field. Or, you can narrow your search by adding a state abbreviation to the publisher field to find materials published in a particular state (see tips for searching specific fields below).