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Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents: Search Tips

Sample Searches | Identification Codes

Sample Searches (4)

The following sample searches are provided as guides to popular types of searches in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents databases. They are performed in the 1998 Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents database, unless otherwise indicated.  For the sake of space, only the top three hits in each results list are included with each example below.

Note: You may search more than one Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents database at a time by clicking and dragging your mouse on the databases that you wish to search in the scroll box.

Table of Contents by Issue Date | Subject | Page Number | Executive Order Number

1. Search for Table of Contents by Issue Date

This type of search returns the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents table of contents for a specific date. If you do not include a date in your query, the table of contents for every issue of the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents in the database(s) you are searching will be returned.

Query:	contents AND "February 8, 1999"
Results:	pd08fe99 Contents
	pd08fe99 Message to the Congress Transmitting the District of Columbia Courts'

To view the table of contents, click on the text or PDF link for "Contents," which will retrieve the document.

Note: If you search only by date, all of the documents from that date's issue, as well as documents that reference the date, will be returned. You can narrow your search by including a subject (see "Search by Subject" below for more information).

2. Search by Subject

This type of search returns documents that are related to a specific subject. The word(s) that you enter as your search term(s) may appear anywhere within the document.

Query:	"radio address"
Alternative:	radio ADJ address
Results:	pd19ja98 The President's Radio Address
	pd30no98 The President's Radio Address
	pd04my98 The President's Radio Address

3. Search by Page Number

This type of search returns documents that appear wholly or partially on a specified page. You must include the word "page" in your query in order to eliminate the return of documents that include the page number as a numeric reference within the text.

Query:	"page 1158"
Results:	pd25jn98 Digest of Other White House Announcements
	pd25jn98 Nominations Submitted to the Senate

For documents that span more than one page, it is possible to find the full page range by consulting the heading in an ASCII text file or the "Go To Page" tool in the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Page breaks are indicated by separators (e.g., [[Page 1158]]) in an ASCII text file or by a new page view in the Adobe Acrobat Reader; they may, as in a printed document, fall in the middle of a sentence.

3. Search by Executive Order Number

This type of search returns documents based on an executive order number.

Query:	"executive order 13094"
Results:	pd03au98 Executive Order 13094--Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction
	pd16no98 Letter to Congressional Leaders on Continuation of the Emergency

If you wish to retrieve a string of executive orders, you may use an asterisk (*) to truncate the number. For example, the query "executive order 1309*" returns executive orders with the numbers 13090 through 13099.

Identification Codes

In the list that displays your query results, the title of each document from the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents is preceded by an identification code. The identification code contains two elements: a database abbreviation and the issue date. For example, in the identification code "pd11ja99," "pd" stands for Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (Presidential Documents for short), and "11ja99" is the issue date (January 11, 1999).

A service of the U.S. Government Printing Office.

Last updated: September 27, 2003
Page Name: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wcomp/tips.html