Search Tips
This section provides tips on performing effective searches.
- Performing a Search
- Performing an Advanced Search
- Searching with Parts of Words
- Using Punctuation in Searches
- Refining Your Search
- Interpreting Your Search Results
- Frequently Asked Questions
Performing a Search
- The TB Materials Search box is located at the top of all pages of the Website.
- In the Search box, enter the word or words that describe your topic. For example, if you are searching for summaries of materials relating to DOTS, type DOTS in the Search field.
- Click Search.
Performing an Advanced Search
- From any page of the Website , click Search TB Materials. The Advanced Search screen appears.
- The table below describes the fields on the Advanced Search screen. You may use one, several, or all fields on the screen to conduct your search.
Searching with Parts of Words
Truncation lets you search for more than one form of a word by entering a part of a word and placing an asterisk
at the end of it.
For example, if you type prevent* in the Title field, the search would look for the word "prevent" as well as words that contain the word "prevent." Therefore, your results would include these titles:
- Tuberculosis (TB) Preventive Therapy
- National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention 2001 Program Briefing
- You Can Prevent TB
Using Punctuation in Searches
The system does not understand most punctuation. If you use any form of punctuation in your search and get an
error message or no results, remove the punctuation and try your search again.
Refining Your Search
If you find too few or no results, try broadening your search by:
- Removing one of the terms from your search
- Looking for misspellings in the terms you have entered
- Using a complete term instead of an acronym. For example, instead of LTBI, try Latent Tuberculosis Infection.
If you find too many results—try narrowing your search by:
- Using words that are more specific. For example, instead of testing, try skin testing.
- Making selections in other fields. Because all of the materials in the database are TB-related, a search with just the word TB in the Search All Text field will yield too many records. Narrow the search by entering another word in the same field, such as testing, or by making selections in the Topic, Format, Audience, or Language fields.
Interpreting Your Search Results
The list of search results contains the publication's title, format, year of publication, distributing
organization, language, and audience.
- To view the details of a single record in the search results list, click the record's title
- To view the details of several records in the search results list, click the checkboxes next to the records you want to see, then click View
- To view the details of all records on this page in the search results list, click the checkbox next to View All, then click View
The search results are presented in a table that can be sorted by column headings. Select the down arrow to sort in descending order, select the up arrow
to sort in ascending order.
- View: Select the arrows in the View column to sort the results by relevancy.
- Title: Select the arrows in the Title column to sort the results alphabetically by title.
- Format: Select the arrows in the Format column to sort the results alphabetically by format.
- Date: Select the arrows in the Date column to sort the results chronologically by publication date.
- Publisher: Select the arrows in the Publisher column to sort the results alphabetically by the first organization listed that distributes the material.
- Language: Select the arrows in the Language column to sort the results alphabetically by language. Bi-lingual materials will sort by only one of the languages.
- Audience: This column cannot be sorted.
Frequently Asked Questions
These are frequently asked questions about the TB Education and Training Resource Materials Database. If you
would like to suggest an FAQ for this list, send an e-mail to info@findtbresources.org.
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Question | Why doesn't the Find TB Resources Database retrieve any records on my topic? |
Answer | The database may not find any records for your topic for several reasons:
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Question | My search results gave me too many records. How can I narrow my search? |
Answer | Try narrowing your search. |
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Question | Does it matter if I use upper or lower case letters? |
Answer | No, the database does not recognize the difference between upper and lower case letters. |
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Question | How do I know what words to use? |
Answer | If you think the database should have information on your topic but you are not finding any records, you may be using a term that is different from the one the database uses. Try to think of another way to phrase the concept you're looking for. Also, try broadening your search. |
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Question | When I've viewed the details of materials in my search results list, I've noticed that not all fields show up for all materials. For example, sometimes there's an author listed and sometimes there isn't. Why is that? |
Answer | Fields do not appear if they do not contain data. For example, for some materials the Author field does not show up because there is no author attributed to the information. |
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