PubList.com provides a variety of searches to help you find the information you need.

• Quick Search searches for word(s) in the publication title and subtitle. Word order is important. It looks for words in the same order as you enter them in the search box. For example: if you search for "star" you would find titles where "star", "startle" (or another word with the same first letters) is the first word in the title. If you get no hits, search the same word(s) as a Title or Publisher Search.

On the Advanced Search Options page (from the Search button), six choices are featured:

• Title Search searches for word(s) in the publication title and related fields, regardless of word order. You can select either exact word (i.e. "star") or partial words ("star" also retrieves "startle"). You can also access Quick Search from this screen.

• Publisher Search searches for word(s) in the publisher name and sponsor fields. This search is very helpful when you just know a few words in the publisher's name.

• Subject Browse lets you choose from almost 300 subject categories and see alphabetical lists of all the PubList.com titles in each category displayed with their country of publication. Titles on the lists are hot-linked to the title record.

• Advanced Search is the most powerful search we offer. You can search for the same or different words(s) in the title, publisher and description fields at the same time. You can use this search to narrow or limit your search results. Terms are combined using the Boolean AND; only titles that have all of the terms you enter will be retrieved. This option allows you to search by the country of publication

• Browse allows you to view alphabetical lists of all 150,000 plus titles on PubList.com. You may choose title, publisher or subject lists. Titles on the lists are hot-linked to the title record on PubList.com.

• ISSN Search uses the International Standard Serials Number, the unique number assigned to a serials title. Search by this 8-digit number to retrieve the unique title. If the number you search is not in the PubList.com database, we will generate the same search in the Library of Congress (Washington, DC) online catalog for you.

Too Many Hits; Unique Words: When you get too many hits, try the least common, most specific words(s) you can. For example, note the difference in results searching "quilting" and "crafts" or "woodworking" and "hobbies". Another option is to use the more powerful Advanced Search.

No Hits: If your search does not produce any hits, there are several things you can do.

• Check for misspelling or transposed letters; that is by far the most common cause.
• If your first search was a Quick Search, try the same search as a Title or Publisher Search.
• Try a Title, Publisher or Advanced Search using synonyms or related terms.
• Use the full word that an abbreviation stands for.

Searching for Abbreviations: Abbreviations provided for terms in title and publisher names are not standardized in our database, which has been compiled from many sources. If you have trouble searching for a title that contains an abbreviation, search again using the word the abbreviation stands for. You may also find slight to very different versions of a publisher's name on the Publisher Browse list and in the publisher names that display with titles in search results. For example, "Inc." may be added with or without a period, or omitted in some records. To view a complete list of variations of publisher name, conduct a publisher search by the most unique word(s) in a publisher's name.

Filling Orders for Acronyms and Initialisms: Terms that are based on abbreviated names or the initials of organizations or titles. (e.g., NLM, NATO, UNESCO, etc.) may be searched just like words. When you display search results, or view a Browse page, you may notice that these terms display before words that begin with the same letter. For example, "NATO" is recorded as "N-A-T-O" and displays before "National".

Punctuation: All punctuation (hyphens, apostrophes, asterisks, and so forth) are ignored in search execution. Searches are not case sensitive, so capitalization does not effect searches.

Subject Categories: PubList.com title records include one or more "subject" categories in addition to the brief descriptions of each title. From a title record, you can click on the subject to view a hot-linked list of other titles with the same subject. A list of these subjects, linked to lists of titles for each subject, is also available in the Browse function.

Descriptions: Records for participating (i.e., paying) publishers have enhanced descriptions that can be searched and displayed. For non-participating publishers, we may have title descriptions for searching, but we may not display the description in the title record. About half of PubList.com titles have descriptions.

Stopwords: About 50 words are so common, including them in searches slows down retrival. PubList.com automatically ignores stopwords in the Title, Publisher and Advanced Searches. For example, if you enter "New England Journal of Medicine", what is really searched is "New England Medicine". (View our list of stopwords.)

More Help: Please let us know when you can't find a title. We'll look for it and tell you what we find!