Searching the Collection
Searching is case-insensitive, so you may enter words in upper or lower case; for example a search for the term "Faces" will retrieve all documents containing the terms FACES, Faces or faces. The search will also look for both singular and plural forms of your search term. Commonly used words such as 'the' 'of' 'and' 'for' etc. will be ignored.
If you are searching for a phrase that you want to match exactly, enclose the words in quotation marks ("). For example, if you enter the words English as a second language, the search will look for documents in which all those words appear but not necessarily in the same order. However, if you enter the same words enclosed in quotation marks, "English as a second language," you will only get those resources in which the words appear next to each other. This will result in a smaller set of results that will contain more relevant documents.
Filtering your Search Results
The search results page displayed after you have entered your search offers you several pre-set filters that can be used to limit the set of results to those resources most relevant to your search. These filters appear along the right hand side of the search results page under the heading "FILTERS". You can use filters to limit your results to:
- Articles published in peer reviewed journals
- A specific type of resource, --such as reports or papers, fact sheets or briefs, executive summaries, datasets, instruments, etc.
- Resources by a particular author
- Resources that were published in a given year
- Resources in which date were collected in a specific state
Only filters that will produce results are displayed on the right side of your search results page. Also the number of results you would get is indicated in parentheses following the filter values. The most frequently occurring values appear on the screen. If the list of filter values is longer than about 5 items, the word "more" will appear at the bottom of this list; you can click on "more" to expand the list on the current page. Some very long lists, such as the result of an author filter if there are many authors will include a "view all" option.
The Current Search section displays the terms and filters used to produce the results shown on the page. To remove a filter click on the word "remove" next to the term. The search will expand back to the results before you applied the filter.
Sorting Search Results
Unless you change it, the default sort order presents the most "relevant" resources first. In this case, relevance is a measure of how well a particular resource reflects the search terms entered and is calculated by the search tool. Relevance order presents the most useful resources near the top of the list. Documents where the search term appears more often are considered more relevant.
To sort by criteria other than "relevance" you may change the order in which the results are presented by using the "Sort by" option in the gray bar at the top and bottom of the search results list. Sort options include: Title, Publication Date, and items most recently added to the Research Connections collection.
Saving Your Search
You may also save your search and register to be notified when new items meeting your search criteria are added to the Research Connections collection. At the bottom of the Filters column on the right side of the Search Results page, there is a "Save your search" option. This will link to a Web or email based service that will send you alerts when the results of your saved search change.
Browsing the Collection
A second way to access the resources contained in the Research Connections collection is to use the "Browse" capability. Browsing provides users with a list of words or phrases, listed alphabetically or topically and links to the resources that contain them. Browsing is useful when you are unsure what words were used to express a concept in the collection, when a concept may have been expressed in several different ways, or when you wish to access a particular author or state, without looking for specific content.
You can "Browse by":
- Author which includes Editor
- State in which data were collected
- Topic which are assigned by Research Connections to assist exploration of the collection
These browse options will show you the range of possibilities represented in the collection and will link to the pertinent resources. For example you could browse the state list and click on the entry for Michigan to see all the reports and studies in the collection dealing with data collected in Michigan. However, if you have a specific search term or phrase in mind, using the search feature may yield more results that relying on the list of browsing terms.
Accessing the Full Text of a Resource
In the upper right corner of the page, a box will appear with a variety of options for obtaining full text. Up to four options will appear; not all options are present for all publications, and for some publications the full text may not be available at all.
Please note that access to full text published in journals is almost entirely dependent upon your institution's subscription services. Scholarly journals seldom provide free access to the full text of their articles. If your institution hasn't paid for access, you may have to pay to obtain the full text. That said, many non-journal resources are freely available to the general public.
Download from
Research Connections. This document is available for you to download directly from the
Research Connections site. Selecting this option will open up a PDF version of the document.
Research Connections uses Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) as the primary delivery medium for full text resources available to users for download. Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free product available from Adobe, Inc., must be installed on your machine to view resource files.
Obtain from the
original source. This item is freely available to the public through another Web site. Selecting
this option will link you directly to the document at another Web site.
Search for an
electronic copy from an online subscription service. This option will be most useful to anyone at
an institution that subscribes to online journals. Based on your computer's network address, selecting
this option will take you to the full text of the document, if your institution has paid for access to it.
Query Google
Scholar. Selecting this option will link you to the Google Scholar search results for this
document. An abstract or summary of the document may be available at no charge and payment may be required
to access the full text.
Feedback on your Search
The search capability is an important feature of the RC site. Your general feedback about how the search worked for you will help our efforts to improve the quality of our search capability.
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