Searching the RegsKnowledge® System

RegsKnowledge® Help

   Table of Contents



  RegsKnowledge Searches Using Full-Text Searching Capabilities

The RegsKnowledge® Full-Text Search is a convenient full-text search that uses words or phrases to pinpoint the advisory, regulatory, and inventory information you need within U.S. and International databases and documents.

Click the RegsKnowledge Data link under the Search menu option.
  1. Enter your Search Term(s) in the Search Entire Document Text box.
    2. The RegsKnowledge® Full-Text Search is designed to search the entire contents of documents looking for the word(s), phrase, or string of characters entered as the Search Term(s). It returns all documents in the selected Data Source that contain the word(s) or phrase(s) that match the search term(s) entered. Search Terms are not case sensitive; you can type a Search Term in upper or lowercase letters. All special characters and punctuation (such as , # & () [] ! % ? /) are ignored during a search.

    "Noise" Words are common words (such as a, an, as) that are ignored during a search. "Noise" words are treated as placeholders in phrase and proximity searches. For example, if you searched for "right to know", the results could give you "rights to know" and "right and know" because the word "to" is a "noise" word. A complete list of noise words is available for review.

    Boolean and Wildcard Operators including 'AND', 'OR', 'AND NOT', '*', and '**' may be used to refine your Search Term(s). See more information about using these operators in the Using Boolean and Proximity Operators and Wildcard Searching sections.

  2. Optional Selection: Limit search to Mega Tag Tiles Only.
    3. Check this box to search the Title Meta Tag (only) of documents for the word(s), phrase, or string of characters you enter. Meta tags are used by the authors of Web pages to store descriptions of the contents of the Web page; these descriptions are not actually displayed on the page and do not necessarily include information such as the document title or substance name. This search only returns documents from the selected Data Sources when the text entered matches the text in the Title Meta Tag of a document.
    Note: This search option is not available for Data Sources in PDF format.

  3. Pick a Source to Search.
    4. Select one Data Source to search and all documents within that chosen Data Source will be searched. To further refine your search results, you can narrow your search criteria by clicking the individual checkboxes listed under the Data Source listings on the right side of the page. Only those boxes checked under your chosen Data Source will be searched. (Remember to click those boxes that are listed only under your chosen Data Source, otherwise you will be prompted to remove checks from boxes not listed under your chosen Data Source.) If at any point you would like to reset your Search Term(s) and Data Source selections, click the 'clear' button. All selections will be cleared from the page.
    Note: If you wish to browse through any of the regulatory sources by year, or section, use the 'Browse Data Sources' search or click on a hyper-linked name of a Data Source under 'Pick a Source to Search'.

  4. Click the 'Search' button.
    5. The search results that most closely match your Search Term(s) are listed.


  Using Boolean and Proximity Operators

The following Boolean and Proximity Operators are available for use in the Boolean Search Boxes.
Operator Example Results
AND hazard AND material Pages with both the words "hazard" and "material"
OR breathing OR respirator Pages containing "breathing", or "respirator", or both
AND NOT clothing AND NOT gloves Pages with the word "clothing" but without occurrences of "gloves"


Boolean and Proximity Operators used in the Boolean Search Boxes can create a more precise search.
To Search For Example Results
A phrase on a page community right-to-know Pages with the phrase "community right-to-know"
Both terms in the same page water and quality Pages with both the words "water" and "quality"
Either term in a page emergency or urgent Pages with the words "clothing" or "urgent"
The first term without the second term clothing and not gloves Pages with the words "clothing", but not "gloves"

Hints:
  • You can add parentheses to nest expressions within a query. The expressions in parentheses are evaluated before the rest of the query. For example, entering "(personal OR protective) AND gloves" first searches for pages containing "personal" or "protective" (or both), then performs the AND search for pages containing "gloves." The results would return pages containing both "personal" and "gloves," and also pages containing both "protective" and "gloves." If you did not use the parentheses in this sample query, the AND expression "protective AND gloves" would be evaluated before the OR expression. Without the parentheses, the pages found would consist of those containing both "protective" and "gloves" (including those containing "personal") and also those containing "personal," though not containing "protective" or "gloves."
  • Use double quotes (") to indicate that a Boolean operator keyword should be ignored in your query. For example, "Abbott and Costello" will match pages with that phrase, not pages that match the Boolean expression. In addition to being an operator, the word 'and' is a noise word in English.
  • The AND operator has a higher precedence than OR. For example, the first three queries are equal, but the fourth is not:
    • a AND b OR c
    • c OR a AND b
    • c OR (a AND b)
    • (c OR a) AND b


  Wildcard Searching

Wildcard operators help you find pages containing words similar to a given word.
To Search For Example Results
Words with the same prefix protect* Pages with words that have the prefix "protect," such as "protect," "protective," and so on
Words based on the same stem teach** Pages with words based on the same stem as "teach", such as "teaching," "taught," "teacher," and so on