The
Library of Congress >> Search
Finding Aids (outline view)
This search screen includes options for "simple" keyword searches
on
a word or words.
Search for Word or Phrase
How to Format Search Terms
- Common words such as and, not, and the are ignored by the search engine.
-
Case of letters is ignored. For example, Civil and civil are treated
the same.
- Diacritic characters (accent marks, in non-English text) produce inaccurate
results, so plain unaccented letters should be substituted for letters with
diacritics; for instance, search "munoz", not "muñoz."
- When searching within the document using the browser's "find" command,
enter the search term both with and without diacritics to find all occurrences
- Special characters (such as ampersands) and most punctuation (such as periods,
commas, and quotation marks) are ignored in searching. Apostrophes and hyphens
are changed into spaces.
Search for a Phrase
- Do not put quotation marks around the phrase being searched.
- When searching for a phrase, enter the words in the order they are most likely
to occur. The order of search words does not affect the scope of the search
results, but it will affect the order of their display.
Search Options
Frames (Outline view) or No frames (Full view)
- Finding aids searched from this site (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/faid/faidfrquery.html)
will be displayed using frames. Frames have been selected
as the default option for finding aids on the search page because of the highly
contextual nature of these documents, which are best understood when the table
of contents is available on-screen at all times. The use of frames also permits
large documents to be "chunked," which allows the browser to retrieve
only the portion of the finding aid needed at the time.
- If the "entire finding aid" option is selected,
another version of the search page will be displayed (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/faid/faidquery.html.)
Search results obtained using this page will be organized by relevancy, and
each finding aid will display as one document.
- Searches in the outline view operate differently than in the full text
view. In outline view, each section of a finding aid is considered a separate
document; searches retrieve each section which contains all the search terms
in a query. For example, a finding aid may contain both the terms "photograph"
and "alsop" -- but if these terms are not in the same section, an
outline view search will not return the document. The document will, however,
be retrieved in the full text view using the "Entire finding aid"
option, where the complete finding aid is searched as a single document.
Entire Finding Aid, Front Matter, or Container List
- All searches will run against sections of the Entire
Finding Aid unless specified otherwise.
- If preferred, the search may be confined to
the title page and narrative parts of the finding aid, including
Administrative Information, Biographical Note/Agency History, Scope and
Content Note, and Description of Series (Front Matter),
or to the detailed list of contents (Container List). All
finding aids consist of at least two sections, Front Matter, and Container
List.
In longer
finding aids, each series in a Container List will be a separate section
against which searches are run.
Exact Search or Variant Words
- All searches will return results for variants of keywords
(such as plurals), unless the option "exact match only" is selected.
Library of Congress Collections
- All searches will run against all collections at the
Library of Congress represented by finding aids encoded using Encoded
Archival Description (EAD), unless
specified
otherwise.
- To limit the search to a collections found in specific reading
rooms or research centers within the Library of Congress,
select from the following options: "Folklife
Collections," "Geography and Map Collections," "Manuscript
Collections," "Performing Arts Collections," "Prints
and Photographs Collections,"
"Rare Book Collections,"
and "Recorded Sound Collections." Only one option may be selected
at a time.
Organize Search Results
- Search results listing the sections of the finding aid in which search terms
were found will be ordered by relevancy, unless the "finding
aid" button is selected; note that different sections of the same finding
aid may be listed separately based on their individual relevancy.
- If the "finding aid" button is selected, all
portions of a given finding aid in which the search term was found will be
listed together. Note that the order of the list is based on finding aid identifier
number, and results will not be listed in order of relevancy.
Note: The search engine used for the Finding Aids database
is currently licensed from Chiliad Publishing Incorporated.
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Interpreting
Search Results and Viewing Finding Aids | EAD
Finding Aids at the Library of Congress | EAD
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