Searching
        Keyword Search
        Phrase Searches
        Boolean Operators
        Grouping/Parentheses
        Wildcards/Truncation/Stemming
        Proximity Searching
        Boosting a Search Term
        Field Searching
        Pre-limits
        Browse
        Word Index
                      Keyword searching from

 Search History

 Results
        Sort order
        Maximum retrieval

 Saving records

 Printing

Searching – a search query consists of two parts, the search terms and search operators.

• Search terms may be a single word or a phrase (two or more words enclosed in double quotes)
          Some examples: history, genealogy, religion, "civil war", "underground railroad"
• Search operators are AND, OR, NOT, +, or -.

Keyword Search – enter one or more search terms in the search box and click Search. The full text of individual documents will be searched and must include all of the words or phrases that were queried.

Example
• slavery ohio - returns results with both words, slavery and ohio

Phrase Search – to search a specific phrase, enclose it in quotation marks.

Examples
• “confederate generals”
• “rebel troops”

Boolean Operators – combine search terms using a logical sequence, similar to algebra. AND, OR, NOT, + or - operators may be used with single terms, phrases, and parenthesized expressions. The operators do not need to be capitalized.

AND – matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. AND is the default search operator, so if no operators are entered, AND will be used.

Examples
• cleaning and silks
• “church music” and ballads

Grouping/Parentheses - Use parentheses to group words or phrases together to form sub queries (typically used to search for synonyms of search terms). Terms in parentheses are processed first. Use Boolean operators to combine terms. Parentheses may not be used with phrase searches.

Examples:
• (liberty or freedom) and bell
• (slave or servant) and (sold or auction)
• (school or study) and women
• (sport or recreation) -horse

Wildcards/Truncation/Stemming - Use the ? and * to search for single and multiple letters at the end or in the middle of a search term. Search terms must have at least 3 characters with the wildcards.

• Single letter – use the ?
  Wom?n finds woman or women
  Te?t finds test or text
• Multiple letters – use the * at the end or middle of a word
  Geo* finds Geo., George, and other endings
  Chamber* finds chamber, chamberer, chambered, chambering, chambers
  Colo*r finds color, colour

Proximity Searching – locates words that are a specific distance away, up to 5 words. Use the ~ symbol at the end of a phrase with a number from 1 through 5. Do not use any spaces. This feature is not available for single word searches.

Examples
• “slave traders”~ 5 finds slave and traders within 5 words of one other
• “church music”~3 finds church and music within 3 words of one another

Boosting a Search Term – use to elevate the relevance, or importance, of search words. Use with two or more search terms or phrases. To boost a term, use the ^ symbol with a boost factor. Any positive number may be used as the boost factor.

Examples
• “underground railroad” and death^5
• indian and apache^3

Field Searching – when performing a search, you may specify a field to search, such as the title, author, or journal. The default field is keyword, which searches the entire text of all documents. Search by typing in the field name followed by a : and finally the terms you are searching.

Examples
• art_title:religion
• author_name:smith

Pre-limits – Prior to a search, users may limit the search by source and date. Sources are either names of publications or names of Accessible Archives collections such as the African American or the Civil War collection. When you search a collection you will be searching all the publication titles it contains.

Source – limit to a particular source by clicking on its name. For multiple names, use the Ctrl button on the keyboard.

Date – select a particular date or date range. Only one date is required, so the second date box (for ranges) is optional.
Examples include:
• 1850-01-01 to 1855-01-01
• 1851 to 1853
• 1850 (using only the first box)
• 1850-05-02 (using only the first box)

Browse the Archives – instead of keyword searching, users may browse the entire Accessible Archives collection by publication title. Within each publication title are included: a general description of the title; an index of issues listed in chronological order from oldest to most recent; a list of articles in each issue. Users may browse a title by selecting dates and issues, clicking on articles, and browsing forward and backward within the issue.
To the TOC

Word Index – To browse the index of words in the Accessible Archives index, use the word index feature. This searches the alphabetical index of the database beginning with the word or letters entered. A range of terms may be searched, but the results display about 100 words at one time. To see the next set of 100 words in the index, click on the continue index at ____ link. The number in parentheses to the right of each index word indicates the number of times the word appears (i.e. thacker (24)).

Keyword searching – To keyword search from the word index, select words to include in a search. To include a word in search, click on the word in the found word column, and click the double red arrows >> in the center of the word index screen. The word should now appear in the copied words column to the right. To complete the search, click on the search copied words link to get the results.

Search History – Accessible Archives temporarily saves the searches from a session. Users may refer back to these searches and run them again using the search history feature. Click on the search history link for a list of previous searches, listed with the most recent search last. Each search has a unique item number. To re-run the search, click on the unique number. To clear the search history, click on the purge queries link. Once the user closes the browser or exits the database, the search history is purged.
To the TOC

Results – up to 20 results are listed on one page. The default order is with the most relevant items first. Use the next 20 and previous 20 links to navigate through the results list.

Sorting – Results are sorted and listed by relevance. To change the sort order to date, publication, or collection, use the sort by option on the main search page, prior to conducting the search. Up to 1000 documents may be sorted. If too many sorted results have been requested, an error message will appear – Results are too large to sort. Please make a smaller result set for sorting.

Saving Records – When viewing the results list or a full text record in Accessible Archives, use the browser File/Save As options to save the information in text or html format.
To the TOC

Printing – Use the print version link on individual pages to print the results, citation, or full text of items. The print version opens a text only document in another browser window. From here, use the browser tools to print or save the data. When printing a results page, up to 100 results are displayed and printed.
To the TOC