Accessible Archives User Manual

Written by Harold E. Way, MLS, MA
Unlimited Priorities Corporation
Version 3.2 – PDF Version (628K)

SEARCHING

There are two parts to every search conducted in the Accessible Archives databases. They are search terms and search operators. Searching of Accessible Archives is not case sensitive. At all times either upper-case or lower-case (or combinations of either) may be used.

Search Terms (single words, phrases)

These may be single/multiple words or a complete phrase.

Single/Multiple Words. When more than one word is placed in a search box without any search operators or phrase designation, an “AND” operator is automatically inserted into the search string. For example:

• genealogy history (treated as two independent searches being ANDed together, i.e., genealogy AND history)
• religion
• confederate generals (treated as two independent searches being ANDed together, i.e., confederate AND generals)
• civil war (treated as two independent searches being ANDed together, i.e., civil AND war)

Phrases. To search a phrase, the entire phrase must be enclosed within double quotation marks (e.g. “ ”). For example:

• “civil war”
• “Potomac River”
• “confederate generals”

Search terms (single word or phrase) can be combined with the use of search operators.

Search Operators

Search operators are special words used to indicate the interaction of search terms and/or phrases. None of the search operators can be used with just a single term or a single phrase. They are used to dictate interrelationships between more than one term/phrase. There are three search operators:

OR
AND
NOT

The default operator is AND. If no operator appears between independent terms or phrases in a search box, the AND operator is assumed.

OR

The OR operator is used to expand search results. Using the OR operator requires that either the term/phrase preceding the operator OR the term/phrase following the operator be included in the publications retrieved. Both may appear, but only one OR the other needs to be present. For example:

“Potomac River” OR history

requires that either the phrase OR the term must appear. Both or just one may appear, but at least one needs to be present.

AND

The AND operator is used to limit search results. This operator requires that the term/phrase preceding the operator as well as the term/phrase following the operator both be included in the same document. For example:

“Potomac River” AND history

requires that all documents retrieved have both the indicated phrase and the indicated term included.

Similarly, the AND operator can be used with multiple term searches when those terms do not make up a phrase.

To search steam ships attempting to run the blockade of Charleston, one could enter a search such as:

steamer AND blockade AND charleston

 There is no guarantee that this search statement will ONLY retrieve information about blockade running near Charleston, but it will retrieve documents that contain all of those terms.

Since the AND operator is the default operator, the following two searches will yield exactly the same results:

“Potomac River” AND Washington
“Potomac River” Washington

NOT

The NOT operator is used to restrict search results. With the NOT operator one term/phrase will be included in the results, but NOT the term or phrase following the NOT operator.

For example, if a search is conducted for information on the A.M.E. Church, the results retrieved include too many items about that church’s activities in Nashville. The search may be restricted to articles about the church that do NOT have anything to do with Nashville by using the NOT operator:

“A M E Church” NOT Nashville

 By using NOT, the results are now restricted so that information on the AME Church will be included, but the additional results about Nashville no longer are.

Adding Search Boxes

Accessible Archives allows you to add additional search boxes, providing a user-friendly way to perform complex searches incorporating operators. If you need additional search boxes, click Show more search boxes (located just below the initial search box) and three additional search boxes will appear.

The radio buttons between the search boxes are preset with the OR operator. You may change this to either AND or NOT, as desired.

Your search will be processed in the order of the search boxes, from top to bottom. If you wish to conduct a complex search where you OR together several concepts (synonyms) and then combine with AND, it is best to enter the ORed concepts first, and then AND with the next search box. Always enter your NOT concepts, if needed, last.

For example, say you are looking for information on John Quincy Adams, not published in The Liberator. You want information on Adams as either an ambassador or foreign minister. To conduct this search you would enter (box 1) ambassadorOR (box 2) minister AND (box 3) “John Quincy Adams” NOT (box 4) pub_title:“The Liberator”. The search will be processed as:

((ambassador OR minister) AND “John Quincy Adams”) NOT pub_title:“The Liberator”

Finally, in order to eliminate the additional search boxes, click Hide added search boxes, located just below the top search box.

Retrieving Too Much

Searches will retrieve up to 50,000 results. If your search strategy is too broad, it will retrieve too many documents to reasonably explore and review. Instead, a message will appear on the search screen as follows:

Too many results to display: NNNNN (where NNNNN is the number of hits) 

For example, the word “society” retrieves over 60,000 items. It is advisable in this case to further refine your search strategy.

Timing Out

Once you have initiated an Accessible Archives search session by logging into the system or (if authenticated by IP address) accessing the search screen, you may continue searching indefinitely, as long as you are actively moving about the system (executing searches, viewing results, browsing content lists, etc.). If the Accessible Archives system has not detected any activity from you for greater than 20 minutes, your search session will time out and be terminated. In order to continue searching, you must login again, or return to the search screen if IP authenticated.

STOP WORDS

There are no stop words in this system. Stop Words or Noise Words are defined as those commonly used words like “the” or “an” that a search engine will filter out automatically from a search string. Since Accessible Archives contains a unique collection of resources using phrases and concepts that are no longer in common language usage, the search capability does not remove these words. This allows you total freedom in searching for variant spellings as well as unique phrasing. For example, when looking for organizations that include normal stop words in their names, if the stop words are not removed you are able to retrieve more on-target results.

SYMBOLS AND NUMBERS AS SEARCH TERMS

Some characters are used as “operators” in search statements (see following section). These symbolic operators are NOT recommended for general use. Symbols such as : ; $ may be used as part of a search statement, although they are not searched.

All numbers are directly searchable. For example, a date like 1854 may be used as part of a search statement. Using a year only is not recommended. Normally, dates should be used in combination with other search terms.

SYMBOLS AS OPERATORS

Symbols are available as Boolean operators. It is strongly recommended, however, that they not be used. Should you desire to use symbols in your searching, the plus sign (+) may be used in place of AND. The minus sign (-) may be used in place of NOT. There is no symbolic replacement for the OR operator. If no operator is present within a search box (by word or by symbol) the AND operator is assumed.

KEYWORD SEARCHING

Keyword searching is also called free-text searching. A keyword search will automatically retrieve words or phrases from all fields within Accessible Archives if no restrictions are placed on the search. If desired, however, searches may be restricted to a particular field or fields (see FIELDS section for more information).

PHRASE SEARCHING

To search for a specific phrase, enclose it in quotation marks. It is necessary to enclose the phrase within double quotation marks (“ ”). Single quotation marks (‘  ’) are ignored and a phrase enclosed by single quotation marks is searched as if the terms were independent search terms. Phrases may also be part of a field search. Just like independent phrases, a phrase in a field search also needs to be enclosed by double quotation marks (“  ”). Examples of phrases in field searching are given below. (For more information on this see the FIELDS section.)

Examples:

• “confederate generals”
• “Norwegian flavor”
• art_title:“ame church”
• author_name:“washington irving”

Entering the terms without double quotation marks will cause the search to be conducted as a simple “AND” search.

Examples:

• rebel troops yields 3,279 documents
• “rebel troops” yields 427 documents
• ‘rebel troops’ yields 3,279 documents
• Norwegian flavor yields 4 documents
• “Norwegian flavor” yields a single document
• ‘Norwegian flavor’ yields 4 documents

TRUNCATION & WILDCARDS

Due to the nature of the contents of Accessible Archives, there are many variant spellings and what we today consider to be archaic spellings of words. Therefore a searcher should keep in mind these factors. The use of “wildcards” and the ability to truncate a term become very important. Use the wildcard and truncation symbols to create searches where there are unknown characters, multiple spellings or various endings. Both the truncation feature and the wildcard feature require at least three characters plus the symbol.

TRUNCATION

The truncation symbol is an asterisk ( * ). It may be used at the end or in the middle of any search word in place of multiple characters.

Examples:

• GEO* will find GEO, GEORGE, GEORGETOWN, GEORGIA as well as any other word that begins with “GEO”
• CHAMBER* will find CHAMBER, CHAMBERED, CHAMBERING, CHAMBERS as well as any other word that begins with “CHAMBER”
• AN*STHETIC* will find ANESTHETIC, ANEASTHETIC, ANUSTHETIC, ANESTHETICS, ANAESTHETICS, ANESTHETICAL, etc.

WILDCARD

The wildcard symbol is a question mark ( ? ). It may be used in the middle or at the end of any character string. Use it to replace a single character. Examples:

• WOM?N will find WOMAN or WOMEN
• WOMEN? will find WOMEN or WOMENS
• TE?T will find TEST or TEXT
• TEXT? Will find TEXT or TEXTS

PROXIMITY SEARCHING

Proximity searching locates words that are a specific distance away, up to 5 words. Use the tilde ( ~ ) 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 another
• “church music”~3 finds church and music within 3 words of one another

When performing a proximity search, word order is NOT specified. For example if you were to search

“music compilation”~5you would retrieve a document with the following phrase: “the best and most original compilation of hymns with music ever issued.”

CASE SENSITIVITY

The search interface for Accessible Archives is not case sensitive. Upper or lower case letters may be used throughout and the search results will not vary.

FIELDS

Each item in Accessible Archives is broken up into numerous fields of data.

• Each of the fields may be searched independently using field indicators in the search box.
• Some fields are also directly searchable via a user-friendly drop-down option next to each search box (Titles, Authors, and Book Publishers, as well as States and Counties from the American County Histories database).
• Other fields may also be searched via limiters located at the bottom of the search screen (Publication Type, Source, Publication Dates). See SEARCH LIMITERS for more information.

To conduct a field search, simply type the field name in the search box and insert a colon followed by the search term. Spacing following the colon is discretionary. The results will be the same with or without a space.

state: PA
pub_date:1854

 Please note that not all fields are used in all documents. Some of the tagged fields are unique to certain types of documents. If your subscription does not give you access to all of the Accessible Archives databases, you may not have need for some of the fields.

Directly-searchable fields:

• Article Title (art_title)
• Author (author_name)
• Book Title (book_title)*
• Chapter Title (chapter_title)*
• Collection (collection)
• County (county)**
• Image Type (image_type)***
• ISO Date (iso_date)
• Publication Date (pub_date)
• Publication Title (pub_title)
• Publisher (publisher)*
• State (state)**

Fields searchable via drop-down selections next to search box:

• Title
• Author
• Publisher *
• State **
• County **
• Image Type***
• Image Description***

* Books and American County Histories only
** American County Histories only
*** Godey’s Lady’s Book only

Article Title

You do not need to enter the complete title of an article when searching this field. For example, if you were looking for articles about the AME Church, search as follows:

art_title: “ame church”

You will retrieve articles that have that exact character string within the article’s title, as well as articles where AME Church is the complete title.

As an alternative, you may target article titles by selecting “Title only” from the drop-down list next to the search box. (The “Title only” option searches against the art_title, book_title and chapter_title fields.)

Author

The author is the creator (or creators) of an item or article within the databases. Using the complete name is not necessary, but doing so will yield more exacting results.

author_name: “washington irving”

As an alternative, you may restrict to authors by selecting “Author only” from the drop-down list next to the search box.

Book Title

This field is the title of the book. Searches restricted to this field will also automatically restrict retrieval to books within Accessible Archives (i.e., newspaper and magazine content is excluded).

It is possible to search for complete book titles or words within the title of a book. Take as an example the book by William E. S. Whitman Maine in the War for the Union. The searcher may put in the entire title (within double quotation marks–” “), thus guaranteeing that the only results will come from that specific book.

book_title: “maine in the war for the union”

Without the double quote marks, the strategy will search for MAINE in the title field and a free text AND search for all of the remaining words in the book’s title. It will not be a phrase search.

A more exacting way to do a book-title search would be to do a complex search using more than one field, e.g., an author. An example of such a search would be

book_title: maine and author_name: Whitman

 In most cases when the results are displayed from a book_title search, the searcher will be able to browse through an entire book, one chapter at a time. For more information about browsing an entire book, see BROWSING FULL-TEXT DOCUMENTS.

Finally, you may target book titles by selecting “Title only” from the drop-down list next to the search box. (The “Title only” option searches against the art_title, book_title and chapter_title fields.)

Chapter Title

Within books, each chapter is treated as a unique document. This allows searchers to look for a specific chapter or chapters within a book. The “chapter_title” field is only used in the Books portion of Accessible Archives. Therefore it is not necessary to limit results to books when using this field.

You may search chapter titles for words or phrases. All words in a phrase search must be enclosed by double quotation marks (” “). For example:

chapter_title: Potomac
chapter_title: “first Potomac campaign”

You may also target chapter titles by selecting “Title only” from the drop-down list next to the search box. (The “Title only” option searches against the art_title, book_title and chapter_title fields.)

Collection

There are a number of unique collections within Accessible Archives. Your subscription will dictate the collections to which you have access.

When Collection searching is performed, you will be searching all of the publications within that collection. Therefore it is strongly recommended that all collection searching be set up in conjunction with other search parameters, i.e., combining the collection with another qualifier (subject-type term, author, keyword, etc.). This is not necessary but in most cases you will retrieve more citations than can be displayed if you search a collection alone. Most collections names require a phrase to retrieve the appropriate collection. Therefore, use of double quotes (“ ”) surrounding the collection name is essential.

Examples of complex searches with a “collections” field qualifier are:

collection: “midwestern perspective” and “cedar river”
collection: liberator and Huntsville
collection: “virginia gazette” and Burgoyne
collection: “virginia gazette” and estate and slaves

View the current list of our collections (link will open in a new window).

Counties

The County field is only applied in the American County Histories collection (see STATE-BY-STATE LIST OF COUNTIES). There are three ways to perform a county search:

• Direct search using the county: field indicator in the search box
• Selecting “County (American County Histories)” from the drop-down list next to the search box
• Via the “Counties” limiter that appears when the Publication Type limiter is restricted to “American County Histories” (see SEARCH LIMITERS).

To perform a direct search on a county name, search as follows:

county:Cortland

Please note that New Castle County in Delaware needs to be searched without a space, as follows:

county:newcastle

Direct searches on counties that are in more than one state (such as Washington in Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island) require a combination search, i.e., using two different fields in the same search statement. For example:

state:de and county:kent

If the search were only on the county name of “kent” the system would pull items from Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island. At this time there are twenty-three duplicate county names. They are:

• Alleghany (Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania)
• Bristol (Massachusetts and Rhode Island)
• Carroll (Maryland and New Hampshire)
• Columbia (New York and Pennsylvania)
• Cumberland (Maine, New Jersey and Pennsylvania)
• Delaware (New York and Pennsylvania)
• Erie (New York and Pennsylvania)
• Essex (Massachusetts and Vermont)
• Franklin (Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Vermont)
• Greene (New York and Pennsylvania)
• Kent (Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island)
• Middlesex (Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey)
• Monroe (New York and Pennsylvania)
• Montgomery (Maryland and Pennsylvania)
• Orange (New York and Vermont)
• Orleans (New York and Vermont)
• Sullivan (New York and Pennsylvania)
• Tioga (New York and Pennsylvania)
• Warren (New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania)
• Washington (Maine, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island)
• Wayne (New York and Pennsylvania)
• Windham (Connecticut and Vermont)
• York (Maine and Pennsylvania)

Image Type

This field is used only in Godey’s Lady’s Book. It provides genre or type information about each image in the Godey’s Lady’s Book database.

There are three ways to perform an image type search:

• Direct search using the image_type: field indicator in the search box
• Selecting “Image Type” from the drop-down list next to the search box
• Via the “Image Type” limiter that appears when the Source limiter is restricted to “Godey’s Lady’s Book” (see SEARCH LIMITERS for more information).

Direct searching for an image type with more than one word needs to be enclosed within double quotation marks (” “).

The following is a complete list of all image types used in Godey’s Lady’s Book.

• advertisement
• cartoon
• chromolithograph
• color plate
• color plate, fashion
• drawing
• engraving
• fashion plate
• illustration
• map
• mezzotint
• sheet music
• table
• woodcut

Examples for direct searches of this field are:

image_type: “color plate”
image_type: cartoon
image_type: “fashion plate”

ISO Date

ISO Date is an international standard for date notation. That standard format is

YYYYMMDD

where YYYY is the year in the usual Gregorian calendar, MM is the month of the year between 01 (January) and 12 (December), and DD is the day of the month between 01 and 31.

The ISO Date field should only be searched using the full complement of data elements. Date-only searching and month with year searching should not be done using the ISO Date field. When needing to search dates where less than the full complement of elements is available (or needed), it is best to search using the publication date (pub_date) field search.

iso_date:18100110 — for January 10, 1810
iso_date:18140316 — for March 16, 1814

It is not necessary to surround this search statement with quotation marks, although using them has no impact on the results.

Publication Date

This field is the date of the publication. In searching this field any part of the date may be used — year, day or month. Any combination of these may be used, as well.

pub_date:1814 — (all publications in the archive from 1814)
pub_date:”16, 1814″ — (all publications in the archive from ANY month, but on the 16th of any month in 1814)
pub_date:”march 16, 1814″ — (all publications from a specific month, day and year)
pub_date:”december, 1865″ — (all publications from a specific month and year)

The day of the week is not part of the publication date field.

Publication Title

This field contains the official title of the publication. There are approximately 300 publications available in Accessible Archives (see INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE). They can be searched directly or used as a way to restrict retrieval (see SEARCH LIMITERS).

Some typical searches using the title field are:

pub_title: liberator
pub_title: “the weekly visitor”
pub_title: “stamford soldiers’ memorial”
pub_title: “Indiana’s roll of honor”

It is possible to use a partial title for your search. For example, to retrieve items from both The Pennsylvania Gazette and The Pennsylvania Packet, enter the following:

pub_title:pennsylvania

Since “Pennsylvania” appears in titles other than the two newspapers listed above, this search will generate results from many more publications such as some of the county histories as well as other types of materials.

In many instances this type of a search will result in the retrieval of too many hits, so searches in the publication title field should be combined with other qualifiers.

It is important in searching by publication title that the exact title be used and that the title be enclosed within double quotation marks ( “ ” ). For example, when searching for documents that appear in Godey’s Lady’s Book you should enter your search as:

pub_title:”Godey’s Lady’s Book”

Similarly, if a title includes the ampersand (&), it must be part of the search phrase. For example:

pub_title:”Chester & Delaware Federalist”

A search using “and” in place of the “&” will yield zero hits. At this time there are several titles that use the ampersand (&), so caution in title/phrase searching is important. Similarly, caution must be used in entering complete titles as a “pub_title” search. For example, if a search is entered in any of the following ways, the search results would be zero:

pub_title:”Godeys Ladys Book” (with quote marks, no apostrophes)
pub_title:Godey’s Lady’s Book (without quote marks, with apostrophes)
pub_title:”Godeys Lady’s Book” (with quote marks, one missing apostrophes)

Publisher

This field is used only in Books and American County Histories. Many publisher names are multi-word names. In those cases the search terms must be enclosed within double quotation marks ( ” ” ).

publisher: “nelson, rishforth”
publisher: brown

As an alternative, you may restrict to publishers by selecting “Book publisher only” from the drop-down list next to the search box.

State

The State field is only applied in the American County Histories database. There are currently eleven states represented. They are:

• Connecticut
• Delaware
• Maine
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New York
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• Vermont

There are three ways to perform a state search:

• Direct search using the state: field indicator in the search box
• Selecting “State (American County Histories)” from the drop-down list next to the search box
• Via the “State” limiter that appears when the Publication Type limiter is restricted to “American County Histories” (see SEARCH LIMITERS).

Most often searchers use the state field as a way to restrict retrieval, but it is possible to perform a direct search on a state. The official two-letter abbreviations must be used, for example:

state:ct    for Connecticut

COMPLEX SEARCHES

It is possible to combine search concepts and search types to form complex searches. There are many possible complex search examples, including but are not limited to:

• combining search logic
• combining search logic with field searches
• combining phrase and single-term searches
• combining field and phrase searches
• grouping terms with parentheses

Combining Search Logic

Note: it is not necessary to capitalize operators; they are included below in capital letters for clarity only.

The use of the operators (AND, OR, NOT) may be used multiple times and in variant combinations. For instance, when conducting a search for information about the Potomac region of Virginia, several of the articles retrieved refer to Pennsylvania. If this is not an area that you want to include, the search logic referenced below may be used. To execute this search you would combine search logic:

potomac AND virginia NOT pennsylvania

This will retrieve all articles that have both of the first two search terms, but not the last term. Similarly, multiple types of logic can be used with phrase searching.

Potomac AND Virginia NOT “western Virginia”

As in the search above, this will retrieve all articles that have both of the first two search terms, but not the last phrase.

Combining Search Logic with Field Searches

It is possible to use simple search logic with field searches. For example:

pub_title: “The Charleston Mercury” AND Virginia

More than one field search may also be entered. For example:

pub_title: “The Charleston Mercury” OR pub_title:“Godey’s Lady’s Book”
pub_title: “The Charleston Mercury” AND pub_date:1860

Combining Phrase and Single-Term Searches

Search phrases can be combined with simple search logic. For example:

“slaveholding states” AND potomac

Combining Field and Phrase Searches

Search phrases may be combined with field searches. For example:

“slaveholding states” AND pub_date:1860

Grouping Terms with 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)

BOOSTING A SEARCH TERM

Boosting allows you to control the relevance of a document by boosting its term. Boosting is used to elevate or increase the importance of search words. It may be used with two or more search terms or phrases.

To “boost” the term’s relevance, use the caret ( ^ ) symbol with a boost factor (i.e., number). There is no limit to the boost level that can be implemented. The boost level input indicates the relative importance of that term compared to other terms in the search. The default is 1. The boost number need not be a whole number, but it must be a positive number. For example:

pub_title: “The Charleston Mercury” AND virginia^5

Using a boost level will not change the number of hits retrieved, but it will likely alter the order in which the results are displayed, giving the “boosted” term a greater or lesser importance. For example, the following two search statements will result in differing retrieval order:

pub_title: “The Charleston Mercury” AND virginia^5
pub_title: “The Charleston Mercury” AND virginia^10

The second search statement will list documents earlier that have “Virginia” in a more dominant position and/or that mention “Virginia” more times.

WORD INDEX

The Word Index feature allows you to browse through a complete list of all searchable words in the databases.

First click on “Word Index” to the right of the search box. A new screen will be displayed. There are two search boxes where the range of words to be searched may be included. It is possible to use the first box only, thereby beginning the word search for a specific word, or one word may be entered in each of the boxes and the system will retrieve all words between those two words. Only 100 words will appear at a time. Users may then select from the list of 100 words those that are to be used as search terms.

Once a word has been identified for inclusion in a search, click on the arrows (>>) to move the word to the search box. Additional words may be added from the “Found Words” box. When finished browsing the “Found Words,” copy the selected words into the box at the right, and then click on “Search copied words”.

Only words from a single “Found Words” box can be moved. Once another set of words is moved, “Found Words” from a previous box will not be retained.

When you click on “Search copied words” all words in this box will be searched as if they were ORed together (see SEARCH OPERATORS). The Boolean operation may be changed by putting an AND or a NOT between words. It is not necessary to put ORs between words, as this is understood for searches originating from the Word Index.

SEARCH LIMITERS

There are five ways to restrict how a search is executed:

• Publication Type
• Source
• Dates of Publication
• State (American County Histories only)
• Counties (American County Histories only)

Publication Type

To limit your search by Publication Type, enter a search statement or phrase in the search box. Then click on the desired Publication Type. For multiple Publication Types, hold down the CTRL key and select all types against which you wish the search to be run.

The available Sources may change as you select different Publication Types, showing only those to which you have access.

Source

Once you have selected appropriate Publication Type(s) (or kept the default selection of “All”) you may select specific Sources for your search. If individual Sources are not selected, then the default is to search all Sources within the Publication Type(s) to which you have access. Again, if you wish to search within multiple Sources, hold down the CTRL key to select all desired Sources.

Dates of Publication

To limit by Dates of Publication, again enter a search statement or phrase in the search box. Then enter the desired date or date range in the boxes provided. Only one date is required. Selecting a second date (end date of the date range) is optional. The only format for date input is year, month, day (yyyy-mm-dd). Complete dates need NOT be used. The year element is mandatory. Month and date are optional. For example:

• 1850-01-01 to 1855-01-01
• 1851 to 1853
• 1850 (using only the first box)
• 1850-05-02 (using only the first box)

SPECIAL LIMITERS FOR AMERICAN COUNTY HISTORIES

When you select only “American County Histories” as the Publication Type limiter, two additional search limit options are added to the screen, State and Counties.

State (American County Histories)

To limit by State, click the appropriate 2-letter state abbreviation in the selection box. Only one State may be selected at a time. Your State selection(s) will affect the list of Counties available to search (see next section). If you wish to search for multiple states, you may do so via a direct search using the state: field indicator in a search box, or by selecting “State (American County Histories)” from the drop-down list next to the search box.

Counties (American County Histories)

To limit by County, first select the desired State to generate a list of counties for that state. Then click on the desired County name(s). To select multiple counties, hold down the CTRL key.

Image Type (Godey’s Lady’s Book)

When you select only “Godey’s Lady’s Book” as the Source limiter, an additional search limit option is added to the screen, Image Type. Multiple image types may be selected by holding down the CTRL key.

BROWSE THE ARCHIVES

Instead of keyword searching, users may browse the entire Accessible Archives collection by publication title.

Next to each publication title are links to:

• a general description of the title
• an index of issues listed in chronological order from oldest to most recent, with further links to 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.

SORTING RESULTS

The default sort is relevance. This default may be changed to obtain a different results order. Results may be sorted by:

• Date
• Publication
• Collection

To make changes in the results order, use the Sort by: option prior to clicking the “Search” button. Retrieval of up to 1,000 documents may be sorted. If your search retrieves more than 1,000 documents, the sort option will not appear.

VIEWING RESULTS

Once search terms and limiters have been entered, and (if desired) a sort option selected, the search may now be executed by clicking the “Search” button.

When “Search” is clicked, up to 20 document listings will be displayed at a time. Individual document results may then be viewed by clicking on the highlighted portion of the listing. All areas of the screen that are in red are hyperlinks and will automatically take the searcher to the next or previous chosen level.

If you click on “Keywords in Context,” each of the terms that were used in the search will appear in red, bold italics to illustrate exactly why the document was retrieved.

You also may navigate through the results list with the “Previous Document” and “Next Document” links that appear both above and below the document.

VIEWING AND BROWSING FULL-TEXT DOCUMENTS

In order to view the full-text of a document, click the document’s title in the Results List.

When your search results generate access to a document image, an “Images” link will appear. Click it to view an image of the original document. This image may be resized as needed, and you may browse to the next and previous images as desired.

When viewing the full-text of a document, you will be given the opportunity to browse through that entire document’s contents list by clicking “Issue Contents.” Clicking this link will move you to a table of contents for the issue or book you have retrieved. You may then click “VIEW” to retrieve the full-text of any of the other articles, chapters or sections of that document. Links on the resulting page will allow you to return to your original results list, retrieve your search history, re-browse the issue contents, move forward in a publication to the next item or back to the previous item, or retrieve a page image.

PRINTING DOCUMENTS

Documents may be printed directly from the display using your browser’s print features. However, when printing is conducted in this manner, additional and possibly unnecessary information, including the database logo and reproductions of the navigation features, also will be included.

For a much more legible and less cluttered display suitable for printing, click “Print Version,” which opens a text only document in another browser window. Then use your browser’s print features to proceed. Up to 100 results may be printed at a time.

E-MAILING A DOCUMENT

It is possible to e-mail results, one document at a time, to any established e-mail system. You do not need to be connected to an e-mail provider for this service. Simply click on “Email” and a new screen will appear that has boxes to fill in for the recipient’s e-mail address, sender name, and any comments. When the e-mail is transmitted, the subject line of the message will read “Accessible Archives has sent you a document on behalf of <Sender Name>.”

RETURNING TO SEARCH RESULTS

At any time during the document navigation process, you may return to the search results by clicking on “View Results List.” This will take you back to the original list of documents that were retrieved by the search.

SEARCH HISTORY

There is always a link to the search strategies used during any Accessible Archives search session.

To link to all previous searches, simply click on “Search History.” A screen will appear containing an array of previous searches in chronological order from the oldest at the top to the most recent at the bottom. The database on which the search was run will be listed under “Index.” The resulting number of documents retrieved will be listed under “Docs.” The complete phraseology of the search will be listed under “Text.”

Any prior search may be re-initiated by clicking on the linked search number under “Query.” Searches in the Search History area may not be edited, limited or combined. These searches are only displayed for review purposes.

To clear the search history, click “purge queries.” Once you close your browser or exit the database, the search history is automatically purged.

COUNTER-COMPLIANT USAGE STATISTICS

Accessible Archives is keenly aware of the increasing need for institutions to measure the value return of their purchased online content. We therefore have turned to Project COUNTER to provide a consistent, comparable and credible standard for counting and reporting usage of online resources. (Complete information on Project COUNTER may be found at www.projectcounter.org.)

Also, as part of our compliance with Release 3 of the COUNTER standard, we have implemented SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) into our statistics system to enable you to automate your statistics gathering process. The protocol was designed to be both generalized and extensible, meaning it can be used to retrieve a variety of usage reports. An extension designed specifically to work with COUNTER reports is provided with the standard, as these are expected to be the most frequently retrieved usage reports.

For more information about implementing COUNTER/SUSHI, please contact Accessible Archives Technical Support.

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

For technical assistance, please call 866-296-1488.

Hours of operation for Accessible Archives’ technical support are from 9:00 AM until 5:00 PM Eastern Time.