To browse by CHN's "Groups" and "Topics", use the Guided Search from any Group or Topic page.
About Keyword Search
You can search for any number of words or phrases that appear anywhere in CHN descriptions of resources.
Keyword search results will be displayed on your screen in terms of their relevance to your search query. Once your search results are
displayed, you may change the sorting to alphabetical, by organization, or by the date resources were added to the CHN site.
Please note that punctuation marks may impede searching. Hyphens (-) and most apostrophes work but periods, commas, colons, and slashes
do not. If you have search terms that must include punctuation marks, use the Exact Phrase option as this searches for the
exact string of characters that are entered in the search box. Otherwise, try searching without punctuation marks.
Keyword Search Options
All the words:
Select this option if you want every word you typed to appear in each of the search results you retrieve.
Example: If you're interested in asthma in children, simply type in the search box:
Select this option if you are searching on a series of synonyms, or if information resources related to any of the terms you have typed
will satisfy your request.
Example: If you're interested in the issues relating to smoking you might enter the following string of search term options into the text
box:
Select this option if you know a series of two, three or more words that should appear, exactly as you type them in the same order, in
documents relevant to your query. You can also use this option to search for terms that include punctuation marks.
Examples:
Easter Seal Society
breast self examination
HIV/AIDS
Paget's disease
If you use quotation marks with the 'exact phrase' option, the search engine may return no results.
Select this option to use Boolean commands and advanced search features to customize your search. Don't worry about whether a word is
capitalized or not.
Example:
Result:
heart AND diet
Finds only resources that contain both the word "heart" and the word "diet".
heart OR diet
Finds resources containing either the word "heart" or the word "diet". The found documents could contain both, but do not have to.
heart AND NOT diet
Finds only those resources containing "heart" but not containing "diet".
"heart health"
Finds the exact phrase "heart health".
hear*
Truncates the word, so the search would retrieve resources containing the word heart, as well as those beginning with "hear"
including hearing, hearty, and heard.
Formulation of Boolean search phrases can be complex, but it can offer you the power to really hone in on exactly the information
resources you want.
For example, the string:
"lung cancer" AND (smoking OR cigarette* OR tobacco) AND NOT asbestos
allows you to use a wide range of Boolean terms and search enhancements to make maximum use of CHN search facilities.
