Instructions for Searching Selected Water Resources Abstracts

The data base

Abstracts for the years 1977-1993 were taken from the previous implementation of "Selected Water Resources Abstracts" (SWRA) by selecting those abstracts where the corporate author field was "Geological Survey". The full collection of Selected Water Resources Abstracts, 1977-1993, is available from the Universities Water Information Network.

Abstracts for years 1994-1997, plus some abstracts for prior years that may not have been placed in the SWRA 1977-1993 collection were obtained from files of the (now discontinued) National Water Date Exchange (NAWDEX) Program. Hydrologic unit codes and state codes were manually added to the approximately 1600 abstracts in this collection.

There are about 10,000 abstracts in the entire data base. Abstracts from 1977-1997 are all marked "SWRA 1997" in the source information.

Our future plans are to regularly populate this data base directly from our Reports Tracking System. This will ensure a more complete collection of abstracts. We are working as time and resources permit to correct deficiencies in the original collection.

How the search works...

1. Preliminary points
   • 100 points for each phrase that matches an author.
   • 10 points for each phrase that matches the title.
   • 20 points for each phrase that matches a keyword.
   • 1 point for each phrase that matches the full abstract text.
   • 100 points if there is an exact match (i.e., all digits) to the hydrologic unit number, 10 points if there is a partial match.
2. Final points. The preliminary score for the title, keyword, and text search is multiplied by the number of words/phrases that are matched by any field. That is, if you used "atrazine" for the first word and "groundwater" for the second, an abstract about atrazine in groundwater would have its preliminary score multipled by 2. Author and hydrologic units scores are then added.
3. Required matches.
   • Blank or default fields are ignored and play no role in the search.
   • A match of at least one of the "title, keyword, and text" fields is required. If all 3 fields are blank, they play no role in the search.
   • A match of at least one of the "Author" fields is required. If both are blank, they play no role in the search.
   • All other fields must be matched, unless they are blank or default.
4. The highest score is awarded 1000 points. All others are proportioned relative to this.
5. For abstracts with identical scores, publications are shown giving priority to the Professional Paper, Water-Supply Paper, Water-Resources Investigation, Hydrologic Atlas, and Circular series, in that order. Within series, the most recent publications (as indicated by their report number) are shown first.

Rules for phrases are as follows:

• Except for the author field, each phrase is compared to the abstract as you type it. One misspelling or variation is allowed. (The comparison is essentially an "agrep" command.)
• For the author field,
  • Authors typically are listed by initials and last name.
  • Periods, commas, and spaces are ignored.
  • If you type mixed case, the search will automatically try both initials-last_name and last_name-initials.
  • The match must be exact. (Allowing one misspelling usually yields too many false hits.)
• The comparison is case-insensitive if you type all lower case. Otherwise, the case will be sensitive.
• Each phrase must not exceed 30 characters.
• Blanks are allowed, but do not use quotes.
• Wildcards, etc. might work, but are not recommended. Results with wildcards are unpredictable.

Specifying a Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC)

A list of hydrologic unit codes is available.

Specifying a State

Searching by Report Series and Number

This is an exact search and will not work for wildcards.