Enter only relevant data.
Leave blank any fields that are not relevant to your search. Leave the pop-up list items at their default values unless you wish to search on those fields.

Searching is word-based.
Specify criteria about the words that make up the field on which you are searching. If you enter "Chem" (without quotes) into the Title field, you will find all laboratories that contain a word that begins with "Chem", not only those with titles that begin with "Chem". For example, you will find both "Chemical Analysis of an Endangered Conifer: Environmental Laboratory Experiments" and "Organic Chemistry Lab as a Research Experience".

Searching is not case-sensitive.
Specifying search text of "Moore" or "moore" will produce the same results.

You can search on more than one field.
Enter words into multiple fields to find laboratories that contain words in each of the fields. You can find the laboratories authored by Moore that also have "carbon" in their titles by entering "moore" into the Authors field and "carbon" into the Title field.

You can search for more than one word in a field.
Enter more than one word (or partial word) into a field to find laboratories that contain both words in that field. For example, to find laboratories authored by both Moore and Holmes, enter "moore holmes" (without quotes) into the author field. This is equivalent to performing an "and" search.

If you wish to find laboratoies authored by either Moore or Holmes (an "or" search), you must use the Advanced Search.

You can do "and" and "or"-type searches using Advanced Search.
The "and" and the "or" radio buttons select the type of search you wish to perform. An "and" search narrows your search to laboratories that contain ALL of the words or partial words in every field in which you enter values. An "or" search expands your search to laboratories that contain ANY of the words or partical words in any of the fields in which you enter values. If you enter "moore holmes" into the Authors field and "1999" into the Year field and do an "and" search you will find laboratories published in 1999 that have both Moore and Holmes as authors. An "or" search on these same entries will find all of the laboratories authored by Moore and all of the artcles authored by Holmes and all of the laboratories published in 1999.

You can do partial-word or "wild-card" searches.
Wild-card characters are recognized in your search string. These wild-card characters are @ and *. The @ symbol represents a single character; * represents zero or more characters. For example, searching Author for carl@on will find both Carlson and Carlton. Searching Author for chamberl*n will find both Chamberlain and Chamberlin. These wild-card characters are useful when you do not know the exact spelling.

You can do other specialized searches.
Special characters used before the words or partial words in your search field entries give the following results.

The greater than, less than, and range operators are especially useful in the Year field and the Level field of an Advanced Search. For example, enter <3 into the Level field to find experiments for any of levels 0, 1, or 2. The >, <, and ... operators also work on text fields, but with limited applicability.