About Searching

Simple Search

This is the easiest way to search for keywords or phrases. It is found on every page, allowing you to start a new search even from a results page.

Advanced Search

This can be reached from any page by the link shown above. Use it to build complex searches or to narrow your search.

Use the Search button, not Enter, to start your Advanced Search. You may have to scroll past the Advanced Search form to see your results.

To search on multiple fields, click the Add New button or hit Enter to add a field.

To narrow your search, click on the Filter/Limit button. You have four options:

• General Material Designation: the types of original records we have


• Media: the types of digital objects available


• Digital Object Available: “yes”, if you just want to see digital objects


• Level of Description: the levels of archival description such as fonds, series, file or item

Example: Search for digital or digitized images, including photographs:


More information about Advanced Search may be found here.

Search Tips

To find an exact phrase, use quotation marks.


The following punctuation marks all have special meanings when used in a search. They will cause your search to fail if they are used improperly. You can use quotation marks around the whole search word or phrase or delete the punctuation. If you wish to use them for searching, see the Power Users Search section below.

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \

Reference codes (formerly called Item Numbers) contain these punctuation marks, and so must be enclosed in quotation marks.

To search by date or date range, your search must look exactly like these:

• Date:1932* (for everything dated 1932)


• Date:193* (for everything dated 1930 to 1939)


• Date:[1932 to 1936] (for everything dated 1932 to 1936)

Other Ways to Discover

From any page, you can browse our:

• Archival Descriptions: fonds- and collections-level descriptions


• Persons/Organizations: creators of our records. The list is searchable by using the Search box at the bottom of the page. Each name links to the authority record for that person or organization, which may give a brief description of that creator, and links to descriptions associated with that creator.


• Subjects: subjects used in our descriptions. Each subject links to a list of all descriptions using that term. This includes Vancouver neighbourhoods.


• Place Names: place names used in our descriptions. Each place name links to a list of all descriptions using that term.


• Digital Objects: thumbnails of digital objects. Each thumbnail takes you to the full description of that object

You can navigate from results by following links to other results. We strongly recommend that when navigating from one link to another, users open links in new tabs in their browser. Doing so will preserve your original result and make it easier to return to it.

Results

There are two main types: the Search Results page and the Full Description page.

Search Results will list all results of your search and looks like this:

The above results show

• what you searched for  (“dominion building”)


• how many results there are (39)


• whether there’s a digital object (thumbnail appears)


• Reference Code for this description (AM1376-: 2011-008.22)

To print this list, including thumbnails, click on the print icon at the top of the page, then in your browser select Print from the File menu.

A Full Description is linked from a title in Search Results. It shows the description in context and gives you more detailed information.

The left sidebar provides additional information. Up to five sections may appear:

• Creator : all creators associated with the description.


• Fonds: shows the current description (highlighted) in its arrangement hierarchy and provides links to related descriptions in the hierarchy. Descriptions that contain lower levels can be expanded or collapsed to show or hide the links. Clicking on the “+###” link (+5357 shown above, for example) at the end of an expanded list takes you to a Browse Archival descriptions results page that shows all lower-level descriptions that belong to the parent descriptions, beginning with the first record in the higher level unit


• Export: allows a user to export the current description as in either Dublin Core or Encoded Archival Description XML format


• Container name: lists the name of the physical storage container in which the unit is housed. Do not use this name for citation purposes. Use the Reference Code instead.


• Browse: appears on all search and results pages (see Browse, above).

Higher-resolution digital objects are available.

What's available online?

• For photographs and other graphic material, click on the image to view a higher resolution JPEG file, and click a second time to view it in its original size.


• For moving images, use the Download Movie link below the streaming version to download a high-resolution version. The file is h264 in mp4. A good universal media player is VLC.


• More information about the downloadable digital object, such as file size, may be found in the Digital Object Area of the Full Description.

What else do we have?

We may have a master copy in a different format, for which there will be a reproduction charge. If the item has been digitized, we will have a higher-quality file.
For example, we will have uncompressed TIFF files of digitized images. In most cases, the freely downloadable JPG file will be good enough, but you might need a TIFF because:

• it's uncompressed, so it might look a little clearer than the jpg (fewer compression artifacts). This may only be necessary if you are blowing it up to the size of a wall.


• it's uncompressed, so if you're doing a lot of manipulation of the image, it will not be degraded by repeated saving (again, fewer compression artifacts). A workaround is to download our high-res jpg and immediately save it as an uncompressed TIF.


• your publisher demands it.

Power Users' Search

If you are used to sophisticated searching, here are the symbols that work in our system and their behaviour.

Symbol	Use
"	Term enclosed in quotes must appear exactly as provided. Example: "towel" will find towel, but not towels.
+	Term after "+" must be in the result. Example: +tea cricket requires that results that must contain the term tea in them, and may have the term cricket.
-	Term after "-" must not be in the result. Example: -tea cricket requires that results that must not contain the term tea in them, and may have the term cricket.
?	Single character wildcard. Example: p?per will find paper and piper, but not pepper.
*	Multiple character wildcard. Example: galax* will find galaxy and galaxies, but not galactic.
~	Fuzzy search. Will return results with words similar to the term. Example: fjord~ will find fjord, fjords, ford, form, fonds, etc.
&&	Boolean operator. Can be used in place of AND. Will cause an error if combined with spelled-out operators. Example: Arthur && Ford AND Zaphod will fail; Arthur && Ford && Zaphod will succeed.
||	Boolean operator. Can be used in place of OR. Will cause an error if combined with spelled-out operators.
!	Boolean operator. Can be used in place of NOT. Will cause an error if combined with spelled-out operators.
^	Boost relevance. Multiplies the relevance of the preceding term by the number following the symbol, affecting the sorting of the search results. Example: paranoid android^5 gives results containing the term "android" 5x the relevance as results containing only the word "paranoid", and will sort them closer to the start of the search results.
\	Escapes the immediately following character, so that it is treated as text, rather than as a special character.
( )	Used to group search clauses.
[ ]	Closed interval range search. Example: title:["Frogstar" TO "Magrathea"] will find every title in the alphabetic range between "Frogstar" and "Magrathea", including"Frogstar" and "Magrathea".
{ }	Open interval range search. Example: title:{"Frogstar" TO "Magrathea"} will find every title in the alphabetic range between "Frogstar" and "Magrathea", excluding"Frogstar" and "Magrathea".