The Help page provides detailed information on all the features of the NALDR, including searching, displaying and printing/saving documents. See the drop-down list, below right, for a complete list of topics.
The About NALDR page provides background information on the repository, including an overview of the scope, the system software, and searching options. The page also describes special digitizing projects sponsored by NAL and partner institutions.
The Publications page includes the major publication series featured in the
NALDR.
A publication series refers to a group of separately published items that are
related to one another by a common title. For example, "Agricultural Workforce Households: How Much Do They Depend on Farming?" and "Characteristics of Agricultural Work Force Households, 1987" are related because they are part of the Agriculture Information Bulletin publication series--number 547 and number 612, respectively, in that series.
The NALDR also includes other publications that are not part of a series. These “one-time” publications are not included in the Publication List. A list of these publications is provided on Publications - Additional Information.
The Publications page features the option to limit
a search to a series title or titles. To use the option:
Check the box next to the titles you want to show and click Submit.
Upon clicking Submit, the Advanced Search page will display and the title(s) you selected will transfer to the "Enter publication title(s)" search field, as shown below. Titles are separated using "or."
Now you can enter keywords or a date range and submit your search, which will be limited to those publication series you selected. Or, you can simply submit a search on the publication series without entering any keywords or other limit.
The Publications - Additional Information page lists both the main publication series and the "one-time" publications available in the NALDR.
For each publication series, it provides the series title, the coverage (volume/issue and date range) and the AGRICOLA call number (see Search Option 5: AGRICOLA). It also indicates whether there is a Table of Contents option available for the publication (see Search Option 4: Tables of Contents). Return to the Publications page to select the series title for your search.
For the "one-time" publications, it lists the title and corresponding AGRICOLA call number. Click the title to access the full text view of the publication.
On the
Basic Search page keywords are searched as a phrase unless you use one or more of the Advanced Searching Methods described in the Advanced Search section. Here are two examples of possible searches:
nonmetro elderly retrieves all publications containing the words "nonmetro elderly" together in that order
nonmetro and elderly retrieves all publications containing the word "nonmetro" and word "elderly" in any order, together or apart
Select how many records will be displayed on the result page at one time. The default is 20 records. Select which page of the publication you wish to view first. The choices are "first page of document" or "first page with match to keywords." The default is "first page of document."
Click Submit. The system searches the text produced through optical character recognition and the Document/Publication Details for all of the publications included in the NALDR.
The Search Results page will display if any matches to your search terms are found. See Search Results for more information. Click Reset to clear the search fields.
On the
Advanced Search page keywords are searched as a phrase unless you use one or more of the Advanced Searching Methods described below. The Advanced Search page also gives you the option of limiting your search to specific publication titles and years. Here are two examples of possible searches:
forage crops and cattle retrieves all publications containing the words "forage crops" together in that order and word "cattle" anywhere
forage crops w/5 cattle retrieves all publications containing the words "forage crops" together in that order and within 5 words of "cattle"
Enter the publication title(s) if you wish to limit your search to specific titles. You can select titles from the Publication List and they will automatically transfer to the Advanced Search window.
Enter a range of years if you wish to limit your search to a specific time period.
To search a single year, enter the year (for example, 1963) in the first search box.
To search a range of years, enter the beginning year in the first search box and the ending year in the second search box.
Do not enter months or days.
Select how many
records will be displayed on the result page at one time. The default is 20 records. Select which page of the publication you wish to view first. The choices are "first page of document" or "first
page with match to keywords." The default is "first page of document."
Click Submit. The system searches the text produced through optical character recognition and the Document/Publication Details for all of the publications included in the NALDR.
The Search Results page will display if any matches to your search terms are found. See Search Results for more information. Click Reset to clear the search fields.
Advanced Searching Methods
When
trying to find information, the quest for knowledge can be a broad
search or a precise one. A broad search is intended to find copious
amounts of information about a certain subject. A precise search is
used to find specific information. During a precise search there are
numerous ways to enhance your searching methods to achieve the desired
results. Some of different search techniques are described below.
Boolean Operators
AND
This operator allows you to look for documents containing one word AND another word. In the search oranges AND bananas, the system will find documents which contain both of those words anywhere in the text.
Keep in mind that this type of searching does not guarantee that the
search terms will be together. If the goal is to find the search terms
together, adjacency searching provides better results (see the section on the Within Operator).
OR
This operator allows you to look for documents containing one word OR another word. In the search nonmetro OR rural, the system will find documents which contain one or both terms anywhere in the text.
Keep in mind that this basic command expands the search topic. You are
likely to retrieve a large number of records, which may not pertain to
your topic.
NOT, AND NOT
These
operators will help you narrow down your search results in some cases.
To find all documents that do not mention cows, type NOT cows on the search page.
To locate information associated with cows, but not dairy cows, enter cows AND NOT dairy.
Wildcards
Wild
card symbols add flexibility to a search. Use wild cards to search for
prefix, root and suffix, and to find variations in word spelling. The
two wild card symbols used by this system are ? and *.
Using the question mark (?) replaces a single character in a word, for example:
Ca?s retrieves cats and cars and cans ?ice retrieves rice and mice and lice
You can use more than one question mark in a word, for example: F??m retrieves farm and foam and form
Keep in mind that when you use ? the program retrieves only files containing words with exactly the same number of characters. A search for ca?s would not retrieve any word longer than four characters.
Using an asterick (*) replaces zero or more characters, for example:
Farm* retrieves farms and farming and farmed *stat* retrieves thermostat and statistics
Be
careful when creating multiple character wild card search statements to
avoid retrieving items not related to your subject topic. For example,
a search for organ* would retrieve organic and organs and organically. If your topic is organic foods, a more specific search statement would be organ OR organi*.
The Within Operator (w/n)
W/n
allows for adjacency searching. Using this search technique allows the
system to find words located within close proximity to each other. W/n
limits the search to content words that appear within a defined range
(n). “N” can be any number from 1 to 16,383. This type of search is
particularly useful in long documents.
Examples: Pesticides w/5 crops retrieves all documents with pesticides within five words of crops in any order.
farm women w/10 rural retrieves all documents with: farm adjacent to and preceding women and farm women within 10 words of rural in any order
The Precedes Operator (p/n)
P/n is similar to w/n but it enables you to specify preceding words.
To use the following as an example: Milk production p/20 price retrieves all documents with: milk adjacent to and preceding production and milk production preceding price within 20 words
Selected publications in the repository are divided into parts because:
The publication is indexed in the NAL Catalog (AGRICOLA). That means there is a record in the AGRICOLA article citation database for each article in the publication that was analyzed for subject content. And there is a link in each article record to the full text in the NALDR (see Search Option 4: AGRICOLA Search); and/or
The publication is too large to place in a single file and it would take too long to load and display the file.
What do you do if you simply want to browse all the parts of a publication? Use the Tables of Contents search, which pulls together all the parts of a publication issue or volume into a list you can browse.
Select the Tables of Contents option from the top navigation menu on any page. Below is an example of a portion of the Tables of Contents page:
Publications are not listed in alphabetical order on the Tables of Contents page. Instead, they are listed under an index name (the index name is for NALDR staff use only). In the example, ">>All_Collections" and ">>All_Collections4" are indexes. Disregard the index name.
Click on the publication title you wish to view, in this example, Rural Development Perspectives. The various issues or volumes for the publication will display as shown below.
Click on the issue or volume you wish to browse. The table of contents for the issue/volume will display as show below.
Browse the table of contents and click on the article or part that you wish to view.
The first page of the document displays in the Document Display page. See Document Display for information on navigation options. Click your browser's back arrow to return to the table of contents list.
The NAL Catalog (AGRICOLA) contains links to documents found in the NALDR. You will find links in both AGRICOLA databases, that is, the catalog to books, serials, audiovisuals and other
resources as well as the article citation index to journal articles, book
chapters, short reports and reprints. The AGRICOLA record will contain a link that goes directly to the full text or to the Publications page in the NALDR. Here are two examples:
Example 1: You search the AGRICOLA Catalog and find a record for Rural Development Perspectives. There will be a link from the record to the NALDR as shown in the screenshot below.
Click the link in the record and the NALDR Publications page displays.
Select Rural Development Perspectives from the Publications page and click Submit.
You are now viewing the NALDR Advanced Search page. Rural Development Perspectives is entered in the Publication Title search box. Enter whatever keywords you want to search and click Submit.
You are now viewing search results limited to the articles in Rural Development Perspectives. Select an article from the list and the full text of the first page will display.
Example 2: You search the AGRICOLA Article Citation Database and find the record for: "Making a living in rural and smalltown America," which is found in the November 1978 issue of Rural Development Perspectives. There will be a link from the article record to the full text of the article in the NALDR as shown in the screenshot below.
Click the link and the full text article will display. To return to AGRICOLA, click the Back button of your browser.
The Search Results page lists the documents that contain your search terms. Looking at the example below:
The total number of times a match was found to your search keyword(s), and the total number of documents that contain the keyword(s) are provided at the top of the Search Results page.
The Search Results table lists the documents in order by hit density. You
can sort the results by Creator, Title, Source, Year, Volume_Info, and DocID by clicking on the column heading. The table provides the following fields:
Creator = Author(s)
Title = Title of publication or article
Source = Title of publication series (see Publication List explanation)
Year = Year of publication
Volume_Info = Volume or issue number and year of publication
Pages = Total pages or page range
DocID = Unique identification for the publication; you can enter the DocID in the keyword search field if you want to find a specific publication
Notes = Additional information about the document. For example, there will be a note if the document is very long and has been divided into sections.
File Size = Size of the text file produced through optical character recognition. Optical character recognition is a process that converts scanned text into recognizable characters. In the example above, the 33 KB (kilobytes) file size equals 3 pages; the 94 KB file size equals 6 pages. A text file size of 2 MB (megabytes) is over 200 pages long.
Select any title in the search results table to view the first page of the document (or the first page with a match). See Document Display for more information.
Once you select a document from the Search Results list, the Document Display page opens. Only the first page of the document (or the first page with a match if you selected that option back on the search page) displays. The example below shows the first part of the Document Display page.
Page(s) Displayed - indicates which page is being displayed out of the total number of pages in the document. Take note of the total page count before you select "View all Pages." Some documents are very long and can take time to load.
Document/Publication Details
It is particularly important to note the Document/Publication Details when you are viewing an article within a publication because the article itself may not indicate the publication name or volume number on its pages.
The Document/Publication Details provide the following fields:
Creator = Author(s)
Title = Title of publication or article
Source = Title of publication series (see Publication List explanation)
Year = Year of publication
Volume_Info = Volume or issue number and year of publication
Pages = Total pages or page range
DocID = Unique identification for the publication; you can enter the DocID in the keyword search field if you want to find a specific publication
Publisher = Publisher of the document.
Subject = Keywords assigned to describe the subject or focus of the document.
Identifier = URL to use if you want to quickly find this document in a future search--just enter the URL in the address window of your browser.
Notes = Additional information about the document. For example, there will be a note if the document is very long and has been divided into sections.
The navigation options and the full text image display follow the Document/Publication Details. Continuing with the same example:
Navigation Options are provided at the top and bottom of each document page. They include:
Previous Page - Moves back one page in the document currently being displayed.
Next Page - Moves to the next page in the document currently being displayed.
Zoom In - Enlarges the view of the document page(s) currently being displayed. There are seven sizes (65, 75, 85, 105, 150, 210, 300). Continue to select the Zoom In option until you reach the desired display.
Zoom Out - Reduces the view of the document page(s) currently being displayed. There are seven sizes (65, 75, 85, 105, 150, 210, 300). Continue to select the Zoom In option until you reach the desired display.
View All Pages - Displays the entire document. Note the page count before you select this option.
Print/Save in PDF - Converts all the pages to Portable Document Format (PDF) in order to print or save the document. To view PDF files you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. See the Print Help page for details.
Previous Page with Match - Moves back to the previous page in the document that contained a match for search terms.
Next Page with Match - Moves to the next page in the document that contains a match for search terms.
Previous Document - Moves back one document (as listed in the Search Results).
Next Document - Moves to the next document (as listed in the Search Results).
Results - Returns to the first page of the Results List.
Document Display
The first page of the document (or the first page that contains a match to the search terms) displays as a Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format file.
Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format compresses image files without degrading quality and results in faster loading and display of the image file.
Note that the search terms "urban encroachment" are highlighted in yellow. Whenever a match to your search terms is found within the document, the terms will be highlighted.
You can use your browser's bookmarking function to bookmark a particular publication so that you can return to it at another time. You might also want to note the DocID of the publication. You can enter the DocID as a keyword search to limit your search to one particular publication file.
You can print or save at any point when you are viewing a document on the Document Display page. Before you print/save...
Make a note of the Document/Publication Details so that you have the basic citation information for the document (source, year, volume, issue). The Document/Publication Details will not be included in the file that you print or save.
When you select "View all pages in PDF" the publication is converted to Portable Document Format (PDF) first and displayed in the Adobe Acrobat Reader window. To view PDF files you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. Once the publication is converted to PDF, you will be able to select print or save.
To review reported PDF Display or Download Problems, see this page.
To Print/Save:
Select "Print/Save in PDF " from the top or bottom navigation choices. As shown in the example below:
The whole document will be converted to PDF and will display in the Acrobat Reader window. The conversion process can take time if this is a large document. Note the total page count before you select the option to convert to PDF. It is not possible to convert only selected pages.
Once the document displays in PDF, you can print or save using the options provided in the Acrobat Reader window.
Select the Back Arrow of your browser to return to the Document Display page. The first page of the document or the first page with a match to the search terms will be displayed.
If you are unable to access a publication in the NALDR, please contact us first for assistance. If you want to request a copy or loan of any document in the repository, see the guidelines provided on the Request Library Materials page. In particular, note whether you are eligible to submit a request directly to NAL or whether you must submit your request through a library. This is explained in the Eligibility section of the Request Library Materials page. Also review the User Fee Policy.
