Search Tips

• If you can't find what you are looking for, it may be because you have not registered on the site. Some of the metadata and data on the site are only accessible to registered users. Registration is free and can be applied for via the registration page.

Ways of searching

• There are four different ways to begin a search: quick search, advanced search, browsing by category or browsing by geography.
• You can enhance your search results by using a thesaurus to broaden the terms you search or adding other databases to your search

Quick Search

• Searching from the text box on the menu bar will look for the search word in any of the following fields: title, description, body, url, description, rights, spatial coverage, creator, publisher and contributor.
• All of the text searches support logical operators.
  • Use an uppercase OR between terms to retrieve pages that include either term.
  • Use an uppercase NOT before a term to exclude it in the search.
  • If more than one search term is entered without any logical operators the AND operator is entered automatically to restrict the search to only those resource that match all of the terms entered.
  • Use ( and ) to group terms and operators, e.g. "Bedfordshire AND NOT (county OR council)" will retrieve resources which include the term "Bedfordshire" but not "county" or "council".
• All of the text searches support phrases, stemming and word variations.
  • To search for phrases use quotes around the words, only resources that include the exact phrase will be returned.
  • Use the character at the end of a term to search for word variations, e.g. "dry" searches for all resources containing words of the form dry: dried, drying, and so on.
  • Use the % character either side of the term for word stemming.

Examples: -
%source will match text which ends with "source" (e.g. resource).
source% will match text which starts with "source" (e.g. sources).
%source% will match any text which includes "source" (e.g. resource, sources and resources).

Advanced Search

• You can select from within a restricted set of categories by checking the appropriate checkboxes below.
• The advanced search utilises the same logical operators, phrases, stemming and word variations as the quick search option
• You can search for resources owned by a particular person by selecting the "Choose a person" button.
• When searching for events you can choose a range of dates for your search by using the "Start date..." and "End date..." buttons.
• Searching from the menu bar will look for the search word in any of the following fields: title, description, creator, contributor, rights, keywords, publisher, geographical unit and geographical coverage.
• Use the thesaurus to expand your search terms.
• You can search for events using the advanced search form, or view the events calendar.
• Use this page to find people and organisations by searching for a person's name or job title, or by searching for an organisation's name.

Browsing by Category

• Browse by 'PHITS' category (a three-level deep tree structure)
• All the resources can be searched via the PHITS tree, which is located on the left of the Home Page.

Click on > to browse the sub-categories Browsing by Geography 'Browse by Geography' is a also a three-level deep tree structure, splitting on the highest level administrative and health geography and going down to Primary Care Organisations for health and to Local authority level for administrative units. All the resources can be searched via the tree, which is located on the left of the Home Page. Click on > to browse the sub-areas. Other search options - setting preferences IMPORTANT NOTE: These options may not be suitable for use on slow networks as they may significantly slow the return of search results.

Thesaurus To use the thesaurus, go to the 'Preferences' menu and select the 'Search preferences' option. Tick the 'Use thesaurus lookup' box. That's it, next time you search you will see any terms used at the top of your search results page. Other databases To search other databases for resources. Go to the 'Preferences' menu and select the 'Search preferences' option. Tick the databases you wish to search (Note: the more you search, the longer your search will take) Caching search results and resource details Using these options will improve performance, but you will not see changes to the site unless you close your browser and open a new one.