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National Service Center for Environmental Publications

Ways to Search and Browse NSCEP Publications

On this page:


Searching

You can search for anything in the text of all of NSCEP's documents, using any of several search techniques. Learning which search to use and how to make those searches effective can be a challenging part of using the NSCEP system.  On some occasions your quests for information will be exploratory in nature; you will want to acquire a sense of the "universe" of available information. At other times, you will make very precise searches to locate a limited amount of specific information.

Which search option t​o use?


Simple Search

Our Simple Search tool is the easiest way to quickly search the NSCEP collection.   Enter your search terms in the box and press the search button to conduct a search of the entire collection.  The repository will be searched for documents that contain all of the words entered.  Below the Search box there are options to limit the search to documents published in a particular date range and to include or exclude publications only available in hardcopy.

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Advanced Search

Where Simple Search sets most of the options that control the behavior of your search, Advanced Search places more control in your hands.  You can use Advanced Search to change both how the repository is searched and how the results are presented for your use.  You will want to learn more about what your options are and how to use them before using Advanced Search.

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Field Search

The Fields Search tool will allow you to search the information provided as a description (metadata) of documents within the repository.  You will want to learn more about using Fields Search to find documents by author, publisher, subject, date or other specific fields.

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Browse Online Publications by EPA Document Number or Title

Several lists are available for browsing online.  Several different forms of the lists are offered, including collections ordered by EPA document number.  A list of documents is available for each numbered publication series (EPA publications are assigned numbers based on the issuing office – for example, documents published by the Office of Research and Development are assigned to the 600 series).  Numbers in the lists exclude EPA prefix and any special characters such as dashes, slashes, or spaces.  Another set of lists are offered that are sorted by title.

To augment the search capabilities provided by this service, a number of document lists have been generated that will allow you to browse through the available titles.

Browsable lists of documents:

There is also a “complete list”, but the file is extremely large. So, it may not be the best place to start.

Use Your Browsers Find Function:  When searching for a publication number or a title the web browser Find function (CTRL-F) to search these lists can be very effective.

Remember: When searching for an item by EPA document number, exclude EPA prefix and any special characters or spaces.

Example: To find the document EPA 600-R-04-030 enter 600R04030 into the Find box.

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