Search the Database
How to Search the Database
The NSGL database is updated on a monthly basis. Full
bibliographic citations and abstracts (when available) are provided
for each document in the database. In addition, many documents are
available here as full-text PDF or HTML files.
To view and print these electronic documents you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader which is available free of charge.
You may search the database by title, author, and other fields. The asterisk (*) may be used for truncation
purposes. For more detailed options, please see the guide below.
If you would like to search by Sea Grant institution or by type
of publication, please use the appropriate NSGL code from the lists
below (please note: the institution code must be followed by an
asterisk; e.g. MDU*). Newly acquired Sea Grant documents that are
not included yet in the database are listed in the Recent
Acquisitions page.
Contents
Boolean Operators
| Truncation | Multi-field
Search | Report Number Search
| Publication Year Search
| Phrase search | Author
Search | Advanced
Searching | Additional
Features | Limitations
| Helpful Hints
Boolean Operators
AND Searches for records containing both of the words
(narrows the search). e.g., lobster and aquaculture will find only
records containing both lobster AND aquaculture in the entry.
OR Searches for records containing either of the words
(broadens the search). e.g., lobster or aquaculture will find records
with either lobster OR aquaculture in the entry.
AND NOT Searches for records containing the first
term but not the second. e.g., lobster and not aquaculture will
find records with lobster in the entry but will not find anything
on lobster aquaculture.
Truncation
The asterisk * may be used to truncate a search term.
(Its use is suggested in most cases.) e.g., fish* will search for
fish, fishery, fisheries, fishing, fisherman, fishermen, etc.
Also use the asterisk when searching by institution
code. e.g., WISCU* will find all the publications from the Wisconsin
Sea Grant Program
Multi-field search
You may search for terms from two different fields.
After typing in your search term/phrase, you may indicate which
field you would like to search by selecting it from the pop-up
menu in the field box. The fields that can be searched in the NSGL
database include:
- Title
- Author
- NSGL document number
- Other Report Number (one the program assigns)
- Sea Grant Institution
- Publication Year
- Publication Type
- Full Text (searches every field, including abstract)
Report Number Search
The quickest and most efficient way to find a particular
publication is to search for either the NSGL document number
or the institution's report number. Please note that the number must be typed
exactly (with correct spacing and dashes; case doesn't matter however) as it appears in the database.
Also if the institution's number was not supplied to us it may be
missing from the database, so if you don't succeed try another search
method.
Publication Year Search
When searching for publication year use 4 digits (e.g.,
1995) in the term box and select the publication year field from
the pop-up menu.
Phrase Search
You may search for phrases on one line in the search
term box. Be sure that the words are in the exact order or you will
have trouble locating the desired information.
e.g.,
SEARCH TERM
|
FIELD SELECTED
|
law of the sea
|
title (or full text)
|
fisheries management
|
title (or full text)
|
narragansett bay
|
title (or full text)
|
Author Search
Authors can be searched a couple of different ways.
You can put the author's first name in the first term box and the
last name in the second term box and search the author fields.
e.g.,
SEARCH TERM
|
FIELD SELECTED
|
scott
|
author
|
nixon
|
author
|
Or you can search the author's last name and the institution
code (if known). This method will also find documents where the
author might have used a nickname or a first initial (the first
method will not). However, it will also find documents by other
authors with the same last name from that program, which you must
just disregard.
e.g.,
SEARCH TERM
|
FIELD SELECTED
|
nixon
|
author
|
riu*
|
institution code
|
If you are looking for documents that were co-authored,
put the authors' last names in each of the term boxes and search
either the author or full-text fields using the "and"
operator. Hint: Using full-text to search for authors will also
find papers from proceedings and book chapters that they've written,
as well as works edited by them.
Advanced Searching
If you desire more flexibility or additional search
terms, you may string 2 or more words in each term box and link
them with the search operator of your choice in the pop-up menu
to the right of each term box. The default (word or phrase) indicates
ADJ (adjacent) so no change is necessary during simpler searches.
Search terms must be separated by a space or a comma. The search
operators allowed are:
- AND (two or more terms)
- OR (two or more terms)
- AND NOT (two terms only)
- NEAR (two terms only)
Example 1 (to search on a topic using several terms)
TERM 1: shrimp oyster clam shellfish
|
Search Operator: "OR"
|
FIELD 1: Full text
|
|
AND
|
|
TERM 2: aquaculture farming |
Search Operator: "OR"
|
FIELD 2: Full text
|
|
The above search will find documents on shrimp aquaculture,
shrimp farming, oyster aquaculture, oyster farming, etc.
Please note: If the truncation symbol was used for these terms, the plural forms (e.g. clam* would find clam and clams and clamming) and other variations (e.g. farm* would find farm, farms, farming, etc.) would be retrieved.
Example 2 (to search for a particular document or
topic by a specific author)
TERM 1: biomass community microbiota
|
Search Operator: "AND"
|
FIELD 1: Title
|
|
AND
|
|
TERM 2: Fazio
|
|
FIELD 2: Author
|
|
The above search must have all three words (term
box 1) in the title and Fazio must be one of the authors.
Additional Features
(to further refine your search)
Two advanced features have been added to
help you further refine your search. These new features provide
added flexibility in searching by freeing up the main search term
boxes.
(1) The first feature allows you to limit your search
by range of publication years. The default is "all years".
If you would like to search only selected years please use the pop-up
menu to indicate the years desired. This feature is especially helpful
if you are looking for the most current titles in a particular subject
area.
Please note: The system goes back the number
of years indicated starting with the last full year completed. For
instance, if we are in the middle of 2004 and you wanted to search
the "last 5 years", the years covered would include 2003,
2002, 2001, 2000 and 1999, as well as any portion of 2004 completed
to date. Please keep in mind that in any current year, the Library
is often still acquiring documents published in previous years.
(2) The other feature allows you to limit your
search to documents generated by either a particular Sea Grant Program
or a group of Sea Grant Program's within a particular geographic
region in the United States. For instance, searching the "Mid-Atlantic"
region will automatically search documents from the Delaware, Maryland,
New Jersey, North Carolina and Virginia Sea Grant programs.
Limitations
Currently special characters and diacritics cannot
be searched from this Z39.50 server because they cannot be displayed
correctly in HTML.
Helpful Hints
The search software is case insensitive (upper or
lower case letters can be used). Do not include stop words (such
as prepositions, articles or conjunctions) as search terms, unless
they are part of a phrase. When searching by publication type you
must type the NSGL publication type code twice (as shown in the
publication type code list). The software will not search single
letters. After 5 minutes of inactivity your search connection will
time-out. If this happens you will need to re-initialize the search
form by clicking the "search the database" button.
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