Search Help

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Northern Light allows flexible query searching using several methods.

Search method:	Examples:
Words	wetlands, smog, lead, BMP
Phrases	"total maximum daily loads" "wetlands awards" "lead paint"
Boolean expressions: AND, OR, NOT	waste AND hazardous mercury NOT air paint OR "lead poisoning" lead AND paint OR solder
Natural language	"What is BMP?"
Wild cards: * and %	healthy* *legal
Fielded	title:composting title:hazardous.waste
Any combination of these

Words

To find documents on the EPA Web Site that contain the word wetlands, enter wetlands in the search box.

Words and phrases in the query are stemmed, meaning the search is broadened to include the stemmed variations of these words. The search for the word hazard will also produce results that contain the words hazards and hazardous.

Searches are not case-sensitive. This means that searches for BMP and bmp will get the same results.

Phrases

To search for words in an exact order, include the phrase in double quotation marks. Searching for "wetlands awards" will return results with the word wetlands followed by the word awards.

Omitting the double quotation marks will produce results that contain both words, but not necessarily the phrase.

Boolean expressions

Search results can be narrowed by adding Boolean operators to your queries. The Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT are used to link your search words and phrases. This is the most precise way to search since you specify whether terms should or should not appear in a document.

Words and phrases can be combined in a Boolean search:

Boolean operators can be combined in one search. The following search will produce a query for documents that contain either the words lead AND paint or documents that contain the words lead AND solder:

The Boolean operators and, or, and not are not case sensitive.

Natural language

Natural language queries, which approximate normal speech, are generally formulated as questions: "What is BMP?"

Wild cards

Wild cards act as word extenders:

* indicates the replacement of zero to many characters.
% indicates the replacement of one character.

For example, using the wild card * with the word healthy produces results that include occurences of healthly and HealthySEAT, which is the acronym for EPA's Healthy School Environments Assessment Tool.

Fielded searches

Fielded searches are a more precise and advanced method of searching. This search method requires certain words to appear in specific fields. To use fielded searches, preface a query with the index name, then a colon. For example, to specify that all results have the word composting in the title, enter the query title:composting in the search box.

Fielded searches are frequently used in conjunction with Boolean searching. The string title:hazardous.waste translates into title:hazardous AND title:waste