Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: The INFO Project

Your knowledge-sharing resource on family planning and reproductive health

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Basic Search Tips

1.  To perform a simple search on ne Source, enter your search term and click the "Search" button.  

All resource types (Documents, News, Archived News, Photos, Communication Materials, Organizations/Web Sites, and Q&As) are searched.  To restrict your search to a specific resource, (e.g., Documents) check the box to the left of the resource name and click "Search".

When performing a simple search (from the INFOforhealth home page), the fields searched are:

• keywords
• title
• photo caption
• author or corporate author
• photographer name
• abstract

2.  Search for a phrase by placing the term within quotation marks.

Placing quotation marks around the phrase "family planning" narrows a search to only those records containing the phrase family planning

3.  Construct a simple Boolean search using AND, OR, or NOT in the search box.  

If multiple words are entered without a Boolean operator, the default is AND.  For example, typing family planning searches for family AND planning (not family OR planning)

AND

The AND operator finds records where both terms exist in a single record.  To search for records that contain "population report" and "West Africa" type: "population report" AND "West Africa"

OR

The OR operator finds a record if either of the terms exist in a single record.  To search for records that contain either "population report" or just population type:  "population report" OR population

NOT

The NOT operator excludes records that contain the term following NOT.  To search for documents that contain "family planning" but not "population" type: "family planning" NOT "population"


Note: The NOT operator cannot be used without other terms. For example, the following search will return no results: NOT "Africa" 

4.  Grouping.  Use parentheses to group search terms with Boolean operators to control the logic of the search. For example, to search for either "population" or "family" and "planning" use the search phrase:  (population OR family) AND planning

5.  Use the asterisk as a wildcard to truncate, or shorten, a word.

You must use at least the first three characters of the word.  For example, to search for report, reports, or reporter, you can type: report* 

6.  Prepositions (e.g.: in, out) or articles (a, an, the) can only be searched in a quoted phrase otherwise they are not searchable.

A search for in the middle will search only for middle. 

7.  Searching is case insensitive.  Searching JHU or jhu will retrieve the same results.

Disclaimer: The information provided on this web site is not official U.S. Government information and does not represent the views or positions of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Government or The Johns Hopkins University.