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This search page lets you enter multifaceted searches and search specific fields. It also provides for the use of several online aids and features that can help you to control the level of recall or precision in your search.

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Each of the initial search lines provides for searching a specific field or a set of related fields of descriptive data structured in the catalog records:

Objects:  Searches the Object Title field. Use the "exact match" checkbox to add precision when you want it, e.g., to retrieve just the one or more items with the single-word title of "Painting" and excluding all items in which the word "Painting" is included in other multi-word titles.
Artists/Makers:  Searches the names of artists and makers. Use the "Include AKAs" option to broaden your search to check against the name authority to include variant spellings and "also known as" names for the artist or maker.
Date Range...:  Searches a single year or performs a search of years between your "from" and "through" year value. If some of the collections in the Catalog are dealing with antiquities, check the BC checkbox(es).
Image Available:  Restricts search to just records with images attached.

The options associated with one or more of these search lines follow.

  • By clicking the arrow icon to the right of a search line, you have access to the index display of terms in fields relevant to the current search line. This online aid lets you browse an alphabetical listing of terms, make one or more selections, and have those selected terms pasted into your current search line, in a "ready to execute" search expression.
  • Each search line provides for entering key words or a list of single and multi-word terms, separated by semicolons, where:
    • multi-word phrases, e.g., "indian territor*" will be searched automatically with an appropriate operator.
    • the list of terms separated by semicolons will be searched automatically as
      match any" (ORed) searches.
  • You can use the * for multi-character wildcarding at the end of a partial word.
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Buttons and the Display List Box

  • The Search button executes your search and automatically generates the default report (or the last one you selected on the Browse page).
  • The Get Hit Count button executes the search and reports back the number of retrieved items (your hit count) but keeps you on the search page, so you can decide whether to modify the search before displaying the results.
  • The Clear button empties all of the text boxes and check boxes so that you can start a new search.

The Display list box allows you to restrict the number of items to be displayed if you retrieve more than you want to browse but are not yet sure how to restrict the retrieval.

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More Search Options

The second part of the page offers several additional search options.

Other Search (1) and (2)

The searches in the More... section will be combined (ANDed) with any searches above in the top part of the page.

The elements of this section provide for the following options:

1)  Click the Use my operators checkbox if you want to formulate an expert search using your own operators for combining words into phrases and combining lists of search terms/phrases, e.g.:

2)  By default, your Other Search (1) and (2) searches will be executed across all of the content description fields in the records — across collections and levels (unless you restricted retrieval in searches above). You can limit retrieval by choosing from among the fields in the listbox to the right of each search line.

The Other Search 1 and 2 lines provide for searching across all of the key content fields or in specific fields.

If you select a specific search field from the list box to restrict your retrieval, the index display is also restricted to that field or set of fields. For example, if you selected "Subject Terms" from the list box, the index display would include just the Subject Terms (see Using the Index section below).

3)  From among the choices below, you can also specify how the two searches should be combined (see Operators for a description of each).

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Using the Index as an Online Search Aid

The list of search terms — full values and words — in index displays gives you a window into the composition of the collection you are searching: they represent the actual terminology used in the collection records that you can use in formulating a search.

When you click the arrow icon to request the list of search terms for the current search line, you are taken to the index display page with a partial list of terms, typically starting with the A's — terms from the field or set of related fields that will be searched in the current search line.

You can move to another part of the index by specifying a character, partial word, or full word in the Show Terms Near: box and clicking Display.

To view more surrounding terms, use the Page Up and Page Down buttons.

Make selections, on one or more pages, of the terms of interest and, when done, click Paste.

Your selected terms will be pasted into the current search line separated by semicolons, for a "match any" search.

If you check Use My Operators, the terms you select from the index will be pasted into the search line in the form of an expert search, with the search field name, e.g.:

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