Help

What Are My Search Options?

You can conduct a search for images only, texts only, or finding aids only.

1. Image Search

On the Image Search page your search will be limited to images only.

Options:
Truncation: Wild card is "*" e.g. child* will retrieve child, children etc.

Exact Phrase: You must use quotes to search for an exact phrase. "gold rush" will find Gold Rush, but not Gold Rush Era.

Plurals and Singulars: The search engine will search for plurals of words entered as singular and vice versa. E.g., farm will retrieve farm and farms; farms will retrieve farm and farms.

Case Sensitive: Searching is NOT case sensitive. Searching for "History" or "history" will yield the same results.

2. Text Search

There are over 1,000 texts in the Online Archive of California that are available online. These include transcripts of oral histories (interviews), personal narratives, letters, press releases, newspaper articles, and other types of documents.

On the Text Search page your search will be limited to the full text of the documents.

Options:
Truncation:

• An asterisk - * - will find from one to many characters within a word.
  • "hist*" will retrieve history, histories, and historians
  • "coo*tion" will find cooperation and coordination
• A question mark - ? - will find only one character within a word.
  • "america?" will retrieve american and americas.
  • "wom?n" will retrieve woman, women, and womyn. (Note: using a question mark inside of a word only applies to text searches within a book, not searches across the collection).

Exact Phrase: You must use quotes to search for an exact phrase. "gold rush" will find Gold Rush, but not Gold Rush Era.

Boolean Searching: Currently, our search does not support Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT). However, entering a multiple keyword search will work like Boolean AND. Results will be returned only when ALL of the keywords appear.

Case Sensitive: Searching is NOT case sensitive. Searching for "History" or "history" will yield the same results.

3. Finding Aids Search

Simple Search (Keyword)

The Simple Search (Keyword) option is available from the home page and the Finding Aids Search Page.

Options:
Truncation:

• An asterisk - * - will find from one to many characters within a word.
  • "hist*" will retrieve history, histories, and historians
  • "coo*tion" will find cooperation and coordination
• A question mark - ? - will find only one character within a word.
  • "america?" will retrieve american and americas.
  • "wom?n" will retrieve woman, women, and womyn. (Note: using a question mark inside of a word only applies to text searches within a book, not searches across the collection).

Exact Phrase: You must use quotes to search for an exact phrase. "gold rush" will find Gold Rush, but not Gold Rush Era.

Boolean Searching: Currently, our search does not support Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT). However, entering a multiple keyword search will work like Boolean AND. Results will be returned only when ALL of the keywords appear.

Case Sensitive: Searching is NOT case sensitive. Searching for "History" or "history" will yield the same results.

Advanced Search

The Advanced Search option is available from the Finding Aids Search Page. The Advanced Search offers 5 additional features by which a search can be restricted to particular parts of a finding aid.

• Entire Finding Aid option, which is the default, searches the entire text of the finding aid and is the broadest type of search.
• Collection Description restricts the search to terms appearing in all parts of the finding aid except in the folder list/container list.
• Collection Inventory restricts the search to terms that appear in the finding aid container list/folder list.
• Title restricts the search to terms in the title of a finding aid
• Call Number option provides a quick way to retrieve a specific collection if the call number (or "collection number") is known. It can also be used to retrieve items within a collection if those items have been assigned individual call numbers.
• Contributing Institution limits a search to only those findings aids from the institution that you choose. The default is to search all institutions.

What Are My Viewing Options?

This site is accessible to all versions of every browser. However, some browsers (e.g., Netscape 4) may not support basic web standards, preventing the display of the site's design details. To learn more about web standards and to learn how download a browser that conforms to web standards, visit the Web Standards Project.

If you are having problems viewing special characters (i.e., you are seeing strange characters, boxes, or numbers on your screen), then you may need to modify your browser's settings to use Unicode (often specified as Unicode UTF-8). For more information, please refer to the CDL Melvyl ® database help documentation on this topic.

1. Images

The results of a search provide you with various viewing options, depending on the image. Images can be often be viewed in different sizes by clicking on the links which may be labeled "thumbnail", "med-res" (for medium resolution), and "hi-res" (for high resolution).

The raw XML encoding for any image can be displayed when viewing objects with URLs in the following form: "http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/...". To view the raw XML, insert "raw/" after the "http://ark.cdlib.org/" portion of the URL.

2. Texts

The initial results of a search will be presented as a list of all texts in which the search term(s) was found. The results list is arranged alphabetically by title. The total number of items that match your search terms is displayed at the top of the page. For large sets, results are displayed 20 at a time.

The result for each item retrieved includes the Title, Publisher, Date, and your search terms in context. You can sort results on any of these fields. Click on the highlighted title to view the text, or click on a highlighted search term in context to view your search result within the text.

Due to inconsistent encoding of the documents, the display of page numbers is inconsistent; for example page 3 displays then the next page number you see may be page 9. Be assured that all the pages are in fact there, it is simply that not all page numbers are displaying.

The raw XML encoding for any text can be displayed when viewing objects with URLs in the following form: "http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/...". To view the raw XML, insert "raw/" after the "http://ark.cdlib.org/" portion of the URL.

3. Finding Aids

The initial results of a search will be presented as a list of all collections in which the search term(s) was found. The results list is arranged alphabetically by the collection title. The total number of items that match your search terms is displayed at the top of the page. For large sets, results are displayed 20 at a time.

The result for each item retrieved includes the Collection Title, Contributing Institution, Collection Dates, an abstract of the collection content, your search terms in context, and whether this finding aid contains any online items such as photographs or digitized images. You can sort results on any of these fields. The camera icon indicates that the finding aid has digital images available online. Click on the highlighted title to view the finding aid, or click on a highlighted search term in context to view your search result within the finding aid.

There are two options for viewing a finding aid:

The Standard View
This Standard View presents the finding aid and the intellectual organization of the contents list in a sidebar navigator. It is the most suitable view for browsing through a finding aid.

The sidebar includes links to the main sections of the finding aid: Summary Information, Access and Use Information, Biography/History, Collection Scope and Content Note, Access Terms, Container List, and Additional Descriptive Information. The Contents List navigator includes links to the major subdivisions of the contents list, typically subgroups and series or series and subseries. Each of the links in the navigator retrieves only that portion of the finding aid. The camera icon indicates that there are digital images available in that section of the finding aid.

The Entire Finding Aid View (Printer-Friendly View)
This view retrieves the entire finding aid as a single document without the sidebar navigator. There are no internal navigation tools in the full text view. You must move though the finding aid with the scroll bar or page-up/page-down keys.

The raw XML encoding for any finding aid can be displayed by appending "&debug=xml" to the URL for the finding aid.