Searching the Database
| Browsing | Searching | Database Fields |
| The Collection Citation | Content Type Definitions | Subject Category Definitions |
| DOE Scientific User Facilities |
Basic Search
The Basic Search is found on the home page of the DOE Data Explorer and other top level pages such as About and FAQS. You may type any word or phrase into the search box and select the submit button. Do not worry about upper or lower case rules, and do NOT put quotation marks around a phrase. The DOE Data Explorer searches the full record (every field) of every citation in the database and returns results that have a text string matching the word or phrase you queried. Because it is a "string" search, you could receive matches based on a whole word or a part of a word. For example, a search on nuclear will retrieve records with not only the word nuclear but also those with thermonuclear.
Advanced Search
The Advanced Search allows you to use picklists and do fielded searches. By instructing the DOE Data Explorer to limit its search to the field that you choose from the Search picklist, you can narrow a search for more precise results. Fields that can be searched are:
- Full Record [Look for any word or number in this field and all records where the word or number appears anywhere at all will be retrieved. Note that a Full Record search is the only search that runs against the Description in the collection citation. It is also the default search.]
- Title [Look for a word in the title of the data collections.]
- Content Type [Key in images or numeric or any other word used as a "content type" and retrieve only data collections made up of that particular type.]
- Creator [Look for a name of a person or of a scientific collaboration and retrieve records where that name is located in the Creator/PI field.]
- Organizations (All related) [Look for an organization name and if any citations have that name in the Data Center field, the User Facility field, or the Other Related Organizations field, those citations will be retrieved]
- Sponsor [Look for an organization name, either DOE or non-DOE, and, if any data collections are funded in whole or in part by that organization those collection citations will be retrieved.]
- Subject Category/Keywords [Look for a word that is in the subject category headers or any word that you think could be a logical keyword to describe a collection. Citations with your search term in either the Subject Category field or the Keywords field will be retrieved.]
Using the Sort Option
By default, the DOE Data Explorer sorts your retrieved citations into a title list. The list is alphabetical. Along with the title of each citation, you will also see the Creator/PI name if there is one, the name of a data center or user facility if the collection resides at either place, the main content type of the collection, and the citation's DOE Data Explorer number. For each title retrieved, the DOE Data Explorer gives you two links. The "Bibliographic Record" links you to the full citation where you can view key information about the data. The "Data Collection" link allows you to skip the full citation and link directly out to the data.
The other Sort option is by Content Type. For example if you search with the word nuclear, with the Title option from the Search picklist and then choose Content Type as your sort option, your results will display with:
- All citations with nuclear in the title and that describe collections of Computer Models/Simulations grouped together and displayed first in the results list.
- All citations with nuclear in the title and that describe collections of Figures/Plots grouped together and displayed second in the results list. This group will display second because F follows C in the alphabet.
- All citations with nuclear in the title and that describe collections of Interactive Data Maps groupded together and displayed third because I follows F in the alphabet.
- And so on....
