Search Tips for Discovering MnWRL Digital Collections

Search Options:

• Basic search
• Advanced search
• Clicking on a "Collections" image
• Browse By
• Choosing a category under "Publication Series"
• Choosing a specific document under "Featured Publications" or "Recent Additions"
• Search Results

1. This is the basic/simple search.Type in any term that you want to search here.
2. These are search filters available.These can help narrow a broader search in the advanced search box.These options include title, publisher, author, keywords, main topic, description, phrase, Clean Water Fund (Yes or No), County, and decade.
3. This is the advanced search box.Type in any terms that you want to search here.
4. This is one of the 16 Collections or Main Topics within the library. Click on any one to retrieve all the documents within that Main Topic.
5. These are the Browse By categories.

Using Basic Search

To use the basic search, simply type in a term and hit Enter.

Using Advanced Search

1. Search filters or options.This is a drop down menu.Click on the down arrow to bring them up.
2. Search terms: Type in your search term here.
3. Clicking on the plus will bring up another search term box, where you can enter additional terms.
4. Click on Search when ready.

Using Collections/Main Topics Images

There are 16 Collections or Main Topics within the library. Click on any one of the images to retrieve all the documents within that Main Topic.

Using Browse By

Browse By offers another way to discover digital content. The list allows you to sort and identify documents based on that specific criteria.  Clicking on any of these options brings up a list of objects sorted by that option.

For example, clicking on Location – County will take you to this list.

The number in parentheses indicates how many documents in the library are associated with that county. Clicking on the county name will take you to that list.

Using Publication Series

Publication series are groups of documents organized together under topical categories, commonly government agency project types such as Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategies (WRAPS) reports ot Total Maximum Daily Limit (TMDL) studies.

Clicking on one of the publication series will take you to a list of documents associated with that category.

Featured Publications or Recent Additions

These lists provide quick and easy access directly to special documents.

• Featured Publications are imporatant or popular documents that are commonly accessed by users of the library. They will remain on the list for an indefinite amount of time. Once removed they will still be available within the library using the normal search methods described above.
• Recent Additions are the latest documents that have been added to the library. They will remain on the list until they are replaced by more recently added documents. This list will change frequently as new additions are made. Once removed they will still be available within the library using the normal search methods described above.

Search Results

Results will look similar to this.  There are two main sections – facets to the left, results to the right.

Facets help narrow a broader search.   The original search was Lake Superior.  Clicking on any of these terms will narrow the result list to the number shown after the search term.  For example there are 86 results for Hydrology.  Clicking on Hydrology will bring up all objects with the original search term of Lake Superior, and now Hydrology. 

1. This is a thumbnail of the object.Click on this to go to the object itself.
2. This is metadata that describes what the object is.Clicking on the blue text in the document title will also take you to the object.Clicking on blue text in the other metadata fields (or options) will take you to other objects that have those same terms in their metadata.
3. Clicking on “1, 2, 3, 4…” etc. will take you to that page within the search results.
4. Next/Last will take you to the next or last page in the search results.