Search Help

There are three ways to search this site - basic search, full text search and advanced search.

The

basic search box

appears on every page with the exception of the advanced search page. When you type in a search term the search engine will search for that term in the following information about every document:

Title
Author
Summary
Document Date
Type/Tool
Format
Keywords
Language
Source
State
Topic

Full-text search

is available from the search results and advanced search pages. A full-text search searches the text content within a document, in addition to searching the descriptive fields covered by the basic search. Full-text search can search text (TXT), Rich Text Format (RTF), HTML, Microsoft Word (DOC) and Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files. However, there are some file formats which are not accessible to the full-text search on this site. Examples of these are Excel documents and PowerPoint Presentations. In addition, some of the documents referenced here site reside on external sites. These are also not available to the full-text search.

Advanced Search

is available from every page. The search field at the top of the Advanced Search page is similar to the basic search except that you can choose whether you would like the search engine to perform a full-text search. In addition to typing in a search term, Advanced Search allows you to narrow your search by the following filters:

Suggested Keywords
Topic
Type/Tool
Source
State
Date

You can choose as many of the options within each section, or you can leave them blank. In addition, within each section, you can choose whether your search results must match ALL or ANY of your selections. If you select "All," a document will only be returned if it matches every one of the selected values within the section.

If you select "Any," a document will be returned if it matches at least one of the selected values within the section.

Additionally, if you make selections from more than one section, there is an "all" relationship - a document will only be returned if it meets all of the selected conditions for every section from which you have made selections.

Finally, a link to the calendar search page is available from the Events Calendar section and also from the advanced search page.

Search Results

are sorted by relevance; in other words, results which more closely match your search terms and/or selected filters will appear first. You can also sort the results alphabetically by title, author, or source, chronologically by date, and numerically by the number of requests.

If there are too many documents to fit on one page, the search results will be paginated and you can click from one page to the next, or jump to a different page. You can also choose to view all the results on one long page.

If you did not use full-text searching you will have the opportunity to do so from the search results page. In addition, you can narrow your search further by searching within your results.

For each document listed in the results, you have the opportunity to either launch the document or to go to a "More Information" page where you can read more about the document before deciding whether to open it.

Related Categories

will be displayed when you have utilized the basic search. This section displays any of the topic, sources, states or types/tools to which your search terms relate. You may want to select a related category in order to see what other documents fall under that heading, or to widen your search.

BROWSE DOCUMENTS:

Browse Help

HCBS / Clearinghouse for the Community Living Exchange Collaborative / (http://www.hcbs.org)