ARC Tutorials

This tutorial will take you through the steps you need to follow to run an advanced search in the Archival Research Catalog (ARC). This search will give you options to filter and refine your search.

You may find it easier to print this tutorial out and follow the steps on a paper copy. If you prefer, you can open a second browser window using the url http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/ and switch between windows to try the steps for yourself.

The advanced search allows you to define your search terms more precisely than the basic search.

 

1. To start, in the Archival Descriptions Search screen, click on the Advanced Search link.

This will take you to the Advanced Search screen.

 

2. We are going to start our advanced search by searching for archival descriptions relating to Susan B. Anthony, a leader of the woman suffrage movement. We will also limit our search to archival descriptions held in a particular location. Here, we're going to be looking for material held in NARA's Northeast Region - New York City.

We have a number of options available to define how the search term will be matched against the information in the archival descriptions. For this search, we are looking for a specific person and so we want to find descriptions that match the full name rather than descriptions that contain the name 'Susan' or 'Anthony'.

Note that you can also search for people using the People Search. See Tutorial 4 - People and Organizations Searches for more information on this topic.

We want an exact match for the search terms. To get this, we need to use the exact phrase search box. Anything entered here will retrieve descriptions only when each word is present and in the correct order.

To get started, enter your search phrase Susan B Anthony in this box.

For more detailed information on all the search options here, see Search Tips.

Because we are only interested in archival descriptions of material about Susan B. Anthony that are held in NARA's Northeast Region, New York City, we will specify this exact location next.

 

3. Scroll down through the advanced search screen to the Location of Archival Materials filter.

 

4. Click on the arrow to the left of that heading. The complete list of locations will open up. Please note that the screen shot below only shows a partial view of all the locations listed in the filter.

 

5. All locations are currently selected by default. We only want to search for one location, so we need to de-select all the others. This could be done by clicking in the individual check boxes, but it is much easier to use the Deselect all button at the top right of the section.

Click on the Deselect all button to remove all the checks from the boxes.

 

6. Scroll down through the list to find the location NARA's Northeast Region (New York City) and click in the box at the side of that entry to select that location and include it in the search.

Note that the filters for Type of Archival Materials, Level of Description, and Date Options are accessed and selected in exactly the same way.

 

7. When you have that in place, click on the Search button at the bottom of the screen to run the search.

Your search results list will only contain archival descriptions that include Susan B Anthony and are held at NARA's Northeast Region (New York City).

 

8. Next, we are now going to refine the search further and look for a particular kind of archival material - a sound recording of Susan B. Anthony.

First, click on the Refine Search button in the top left or bottom left of the results screen.

You will be taken back to the Advanced Search screen, where the previous search parameters are still entered so you can adjust them as needed.

 

9. We will still be searching for Susan B Anthony, so don't change that entry.

But this time, we want to look for archival material in a specific format - sound recordings. Also, this time we are interested in sound recordings held at any location.

First, we'll adjust the locations that we want to include in the search.

To do this, scroll down to the Location of Archival Materials section and click on the Select all button.

A check mark will be added for every location in order to include all locations in the search.

 

10. Next, we need to select the type of material we want to search for. Scroll up to the Type of Archival Materials section. Like the locations, the Type of Archival Materials default is for everything in the category to be selected.

Again, the quickest and easiest way to do this is to click on the Deselect all button as we did for locations in the previous search, and then select the type of archival material we are interested in - Sound Recordings.

 

11. Now that you have all the locations and the single type of archival materials set, click on the Search button.

You will see that the results are all sound recordings kept at various locations. All of the descriptions include Susan B Anthony.

 

12. Finally, let's change the search criteria to find textual records and moving images about woman suffrage.

From the search results screen, click on the Refine Search button again to return to the Advanced Search screen.

 

13. This time, we want to change the search terms and change the Type of Archival Materials filter.

On the Advanced Search screen, delete Susan B Anthony from the "with the exact phrase" search box.

Then click in the "with all of the words" box and enter woman suffrage.

 

14. Next, scroll down to the Type of Archival Materials section and click in the check box next to Sound Recordings to deselect that category. Then click in the check boxes next to Moving Images and Textual Records.

 

15. Finally, click on the Search button at the top or the bottom of the screen to run the refined search.

Your results will show you all archival descriptions that contain references to woman AND suffrage and where the type of archival material is either Moving Images or Textual Records.

 

We’ve now gone through the steps to run an advanced search in ARC. The other filters in the Advanced Search can be applied in exactly the same way, in many combinations.

The option of searching within a parent, a further refinement on an advanced search, is explained in Tutorial 6 - Hierarchy.

For more details on the advanced search and use of filters based on type of record, location, level of description, or date ranges, see ARC Search Tips.