• Author Names - Most records contain only last name and first initial only, thus entering both the first and last name will often cause the database to find no matches.

  Entering "F Furstenberg" or "Furstenberg F" will generate the same results.

  If you wish to search for a particular author but are unsure how to spell his or her name, enter only the first part, or use a truncation symbol (see section on truncation).

  For instance, if you are searching for J. D. Osofsky but are unsure whether the last syllable is spelled "sky" or "ski", enter only "Osof." Any author whose name begins with "Osof" will be displayed.

• Title Field - Entering the first three to five words of the title will usually retrieve it. You may also enter key words, regardless of where they appear in the title. Omit common words, such as "the, in, of" for faster searching." To search for an exact title, enter it within quotation marks.

  Entering Unemployment father involvement will find all publications with these words in the title; entering "Unemployment and father involvement among low-income, noncustodial fathers" will only find this exact title.

• Publication Year - Enter year of publication as a four digit number; two digit year numbers will not search. You may search for publications within ranges of years. There are three methods of entry:

  1) Use of the "range" operator (...). For instance, to find all the publications Frank Furstenberg wrote between 1993 and 1995, inclusive, enter "Furstenberg" in the author box and "1993...1995" in the year box (using three periods between the years).

  2) Use of the greater than (>), less than (<), or equal (=) operators. For instance, if you wished to find all publications written by Frank Furstenberg after 1995, enter "Furstenberg" in the author box and "> 1995" in the year box. To find publication written by Frank Furstenberg in 1995 or later years, enter "Furstenberg" in the author box and ">= 1995" in the year box. To find publications written by Frank Furstenberg in 1995 or before, enter "Furstenberg" in the author box and "<= 1995" in the year box.

  3) Use the predefined "Decade" field.

• Search by Core Learning - The option to limit your search to one of the Core Learings is available when using FULL SEARCH. When searching an individual Library, the Core Learning is predefined for you. Use the individual libraries when you would also like to search specify Core Learning subject headings (see below).

• Search by Subject Heading - NCOFF has developed a set of descriptors to index the articles in FatherLit. These subject headings are specific to each Core Learning. You may search each of these terms in their respective Core Learnings search screens.

• Search by Key Words in the Abstract - To search key words in the abstract, there are two search options:

  1) Check predefined terms in the boxes provided.
  2) Enter your own terms in the field provided.

  In either instance, if more than one term is entered, terms are combined together using the logical "AND" operator. This means that ALL terms entered must appear in each article.

ENTERING SEARCH TERMS

• Use double quotation marks to find specific text strings. For instance, if you enter "cooperative parenting" in the abstract field, the database will find only entries that contain these two words in the order specified. Searching without quotation marks will find every title containing these two words anywhere in the title field.

• All the criteria you specify on the Search screen are linked by a logical "AND." In other words, only those articles which fulfill all of the criteria checked off or typed in will be found. For instance, if you checked off "joblessness" in the keywords box and typed "R Lerman" in the author's box and "1993" in the publication date box, the database will only find those publications written by Robert Lerman in 1993 that contain the word "joblessness" in the abstract."

• Truncation - Entering the beginning of a word stem, will automatically search all ending.

  Child will also find children child's and children's.

  If you are uncertain about the spelling of word, you can truncate from within in a word, by using the character "@". Each @ represents one character. If the number of internal characters is not know, use the asterick, "*" for internal truncation.

  Gr@y will find authors named Gray and Grey. Thom*son will find authors named Thompson or Thomson.

• Entering fewer search criteria will usually result in a smaller set of results than will multiple criteria.

SORT OPTIONS

It is possible to specify more than one sort field; fields will be sorted in order of your selection. However, you can only specify all fields in descending or ascending order.

SEARCH RESULTS AND PRINTING:

After a search is performed, you will retrieve a list of results, each consisting of title, author name, document type, and publication year. When you find a document you are interested in, click on the title to view the full record. Most documents will contain an annotation and lengthy abstract, but some, especially the most recent articles or reports, will only contain a citation.

Continue reading other abstracts by clicking on the "Next Record" and "Previous Record" options.

You may choose to view either the list of titles or full records in "printer-friendly" format. This option removes the side bars and other menu options, to give you a "cleaner" print. In addition, when displaying the initial list of titles, the printer-friendly list defaults to 50 records per page, thus making scrolling less necessary.

FIELDS | SEARCH TERMS | SORTING | PRINTING