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You may search the database by title and author, as well as other fields. The asterisk (*) may be used for truncation purposes. For more detailed options, please see the Search 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 as asterisk; ie. MDU*). Newly acquired Sea Grant documents that are not included yet in the database are listed in the Recent Acquisitions page.
Contents
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
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. (It's 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 pull-down 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 institution assigns) Sea Grant Institution Publication Year Publication Type Full Text
Report Number Search
The quickest and most efficient way to find a particular publication is to search for either the NSGL document number (type the number in the term box and click on NSGL document number field in the pull-down menu below) or the institution's report number (other report # field). Please note that the number must be typed exactly (with correct spacing and dashes) 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 their 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
For those desiring more flexibility or additional search terms, you may
now string 2 or more words in each term box and link them with the search
operator of your choice in the pull-down 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 everything on shrimp aquaculture, shrimp
farming, oyster aquaculture, oyster farming, etc.
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 new features have recently been added that will 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 pull-down 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 new 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.
Publication year range searching is a feature we hope to make available
at a later date. Currently you can search for a single (4 digit) publication
year only.
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.
