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Browse & Search Help

There are multiple ways to find the information and materials you need using www.hcbs.org.

What is the difference between the Browse and Search feature?

The Browse Tool lets you explore the resources by one or more of the facets. Browsing is especially helpful if you do not know the name of a document, but are instead interested in a specific topic, state or type of publication. > Browse Help

Using the Search function at the top left of your screen; you can specify search criteria such as an author's name. Search when you know an exact piece of the information you are looking for. > Search Help

Browse Help:

How do I begin browsing and filtering documents?

There are five steps to browsing, follow this step by step guide to locating documents on this site using our "browsing" tool.

Begin browsing documents

The browsing tool is made up of four categories: Topic, Type/Tool, Source, and State. To locate a document using the browsing tool, determine whether you would like to begin browsing documents by Topic, Type/Tool, State, or Source, then click on that category.

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Filter documents within a category

Once you have selected a category, a list of values associated with that category will appear on your screen. (For example, if you select "Topic" a list of subjects will appear). All documents on the website are associated with one or more topics.

Now select the value that best describes the documents you are interested in. (For example, you may be interested in all documents related to Housing). A list of all documents about Housing will appear.

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Sort returned documents

Once your list of documents appears, you can sort the list according to title, author, date, or the number of requests.

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Refine your browse results

         a.  Adding additional filters
         b.  Search within results

If you would like to narrow your browse results, you can either click on an additional category value or search within your current results. (In this example, you can narrow the current list of Housing documents to reveal only those documents that provide Data on Housing by clicking on the category "Type/Tool" and then selecting "Data" from the list.) Now all the documents in the database related to Housing and Data appear on your screen.

You can choose one value from each of the four categories and you may refine your results as many times as you would like.

Another way to narrow these results is by typing your own keyword in the box labeled:

Search Within Results

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Removing filters

If you find you have narrowed your results too far, you can remove any of the filters by clicking "remove filter". This will expand your results. You can remove filters and add new ones as often you like.

To begin again, click "Start Over".

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Search Help:

What are the three ways I can search?

You can search this site with a basic search, advanced search and full text search

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

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

If there are more results than you'd like, you can add additional keywords or phrases in the box labeled: Search Within Results.

If you do not find the document you are looking for you can then expand your search by using full-text.

Advanced Search

is a more robust form of the Search tool, "Advanced Search" allows you to enter your own keyword(s) and automatically narrow the results by additional categories (such as State or Document Type) at the same time. Advanced Search is available from the top left hand side of each 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.

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.

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.