Use only letters, numbers, question marks, exclamation points, and dashes.

• Search words are used exactly as entered:
  • Two words with a space between them will locate an item that contains exactly "first word space second word."
  • If you search titles for "work tests," you will not find any documents.
  • If you search for "tests," you will find the document "Work Capacity Tests for Wildland Firefighters Test Administrator's Guide."
    
    
• Plurals can be a problem:
  • If you search titles for "trails," you will not get documents with "trail" in the title.
  • If you search titles for "trail," you will get documents with either "trail" or "trails" in the title.
    
    
• Author searches work best using just the last name:
  • A search for "Sharkey" returns all MTDC documents published by Dr. Brian Sharkey.
  • A search for "Brian Sharkey" returns no documents.
    
    
• Year search is the four-digit year a document, drawing, video, CD or Web site was published or completed.
  
  
• Keyword searches include words in the title as well as specific keywords. Keywords have only been assigned to MTDC documents since 1996:
  • Keywords are chosen using the CAB Thesaurus of technical terms for guidance.
  • We always include terms and spellings preferred by the thesaurus, but also include standard American spellings and specialized terms that are not in the thesaurus.