How do I search the database?
Please note that the database has been designed to work with Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7.0 or better. If you are having problems with the catalogue these may be resolved by using one of these browsers.

Quick search
You can perform a quick search by using the box at the top right hand corner of the home page. This will search across the title and description fields in the catalogue. Where more than one term is entered, only records which contain both terms will be retrieved, but these words may not appear next to each other in the text. To search for an exact phrase, use double quotation marks.

Advanced search
To refine your search choose ‘Advance Search’ from the toolbar along the top of the screen, and then select catalogue.

Anytext
Use this field to search across all the fields in the database. To search for an exact phrase, use double quotation marks.

RefNo
If you know the reference number of the collection or item that you are looking for, you can enter it in this field.

Level
This field has a picklist to allow you to search on the different hierarchical levels within collections. For an explanation of the different levels see the Glossary.

Title or Description
You can narrow down your search by choosing to search in either the title or description field only.

Refine Search Criteria
If you have entered more than one search term you can refine your search further within the AnyText, Title and Description searches by selecting ‘Refine Search Criteria’ which gives you three options:

• To search for records which contain all your search terms
• To search for records that contain at least one of the search terms
• To exclude certain words from your search

Date
You can also refine your search further by entering a particular year or date range (eg. 1967, 19th century, 1930-1955).

Search Results
Your list of search results will be presented in three columns showing the document reference number, title of the record and date(s) of the records.

The total number of records found will be shown at the top of the display. If your search has retrieved more than 10 records, use the Next, Previous, Start and End links at the top of the screen to navigate around your results list.

To see more details about any of the entries of this list simply click anywhere within the specific entry to be taken to the full catalogue record display. Each display will provide contextual information about the record at the top of the screen (e.g. name of the collection in which the record is found and other levels of description within the collection). Clicking in the RefNo field will take you to the collection browser where you can see the hierarchical context of the record (ie how it relates to other records in the collection) and see other records within the same collection.