Help with using advanced search

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Use the Advanced search if you require the ability to build and save complex queries.

The advanced search is most often used by information professionals and researchers but there's no reason students, practitioners and others couldn't use it with a bit of knowledge and practice.

Field Tags
Using Advanced search
Searching for more than one term or word
Using truncation
Searching more than one field
Using a mixture of search operators
Limiting a search by publication date
Saving advanced searches

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Field tags

Field tags allow you to search in specific fields (areas of the record) for words or terms. The current field tags supported by Social Care Online are:

Free text:	freetext=" "
Title:	title=" "
Author:	author=" "
Topic:	topic=" " (view topics as PDF file)
Editor:	editor=" "
Journal Title:	journaltitle=" "
Publisher:	publisher=" "
Publication Date:	publicationdate=
	publicationdate>
	publicationdate<

Search operators and, or, not can be used within fields and between fields.

Complex structured queries can be built up using truncation, brackets or parentheses.

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Using Advanced search

1. Decide where in a record you want to search for a particular term or phrase
2. Select the relevant field tag from the list
3. Type in your search query between the speech marks of the field tag
4. Select additional field tags as required. The fields will automatically be linked with the and operator but you can change this to or or not as required.

Note: when building any complex query ensure that you have added search operators in the correct order, and have used brackets where appropriate.

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Searching for more than one term or word

An author search for publications written by Peter Beresford and Michael Turner would require the following search criteria:

author="beresford peter" and author="turner michael"

or

author="beresford p*" and author="turner m*"

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Using truncation

Names and search terms can be truncated using the * symbol.

For example:

title="educat*"

This will search for titles including the words education, educating, educates, educational etc

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Searching more than one field

To search for more than one field use 'and' operator:

title="what works" and topic="children"

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Using a mixture of search operators

Use a mixture of search operators to build up a complex search. Use brackets where appropriate.

topic ="bullying” and (topic="children" or topic="school children" or topic="schools")

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Limiting a search by publication date

Use the publication date operator to limit searches by a specific year or to search for items with a date of publication after or before a certain year.

publicationdate= search on a specific year

publicationdate> search everything after a given year

publicationdate< search everything before a given year

Note: the date is entered after the operator i.e >2009

Note: Social Care Online has references that date back to 1986.

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Saving advanced searches

To save a search you must be logged-in to Social Care Online.

1. Once you have constructed your search, click on the 'Save' button beneath the search box .

2. Name your search in the space under the search box.

3. Your saved searches will be listed on the advanced search page and in the My Social Care Online area of the site. Saved searches can also be used to create email alerts and RSS feeds.

You can then re-run your search at any time.
Clicking on the title of a saved search will add it to the search box. Clicking on other saved searches will add them to the search string using an 'AND' operator.

Old saved searches (which were stored in a cookie on your computer), can be viewed on the advanced search cookie page.

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