Help

Help searching the catalogue

Enter your search term in to the search box at the top of the screen. It does not matter whether your search terms are in upper or lower case. See the search tips at the bottom of this page for help composing your search term.

As you start typing, suggestions from our catalogue will appear automatically underneath the search box. If you see the description you are looking for click on it to be taken to the full description. Alternatively continuing typing and either click the magnifying glass next to the search box or press enter on your keyboard to be taken to a list of files which contain your search term.

On the left-hand side of the screen, next to your list of files containing your search term, there are some options to filter your results. You can currently filter by place, and where available, by the name of a person or organisation.

Search Tips

- Search is not case-sensitive, so church finds Church, etc.

- Search will find your search term in the title and scope and content of the file description.

- Search terms are by default combined with a logical AND, so post office finds descriptions containing both post AND office.

- Boolean operators OR and NOT can be used to combine terms.

- Search terms can be grouped as phrases, using double quotes, e.g. "post office".

- Wildcards for a single ? character can be used, e.g. wood? finds Woods.

- Wildcards for multiple * characters can be used, e.g. wood* finds Woodside, Woodhouse, Old Wood House, etc.

- Use the Advanced Search option to limit a search to a particular field, e.g. title , scope and content, or date.