The structure of the database and the search facilities are quite complex so the following sections will hopefully help you navigate your way around. In essence all searches simply look for the text string specified, there is no logical “and”/”or” capability. As such it is necessary to narrow your target by entering multiple searches, each subsequent search using the results of the previous.
To this end we’ve broken the help down into common functions :-
Searching for Vessels (ie wherries).
If you’re interested in any reference to a wherry, that is a photograph or text within documents :-
- Enter the wherry name and select “Run Search”.
- To refine the results enter things such as location and continue to use the “Search within results” option. You can add multiple search criteria in this way.
- If any refinement doesn’t produce the required result “tick” the “Remove search beginning with …” for that search and either “Search within results” to “back out” that search or enter another search field followed by “Search within results” option with a new search criteria.
If you’re only looking for photographs :-
- Enter “photograph” in the search field and “Run search”.
- Enter the wherry name and select “Search within results”.
- To refine the results enter things such as location and continue to use the “Search within results” option.
- If any refinement doesn’t produce the required result “tick” the “Remove search beginning with …” for that search and either “Search within results” to “back out” that search or enter another search field followed by “Search within results” option with a new search criteria.
Searching For People.
- People indexes are based upon “surname, forename” so if you wish to find a reference to Joe Bloggs, you would search on bloggs (a pop-up will be displayed showing the available indexes for bloggs which can be selected), alternatively just enter bloggs joe and “Run search”.
- Where a person has been entered as Joe Bloggs within a text stream he may also been found by entering joe bloggs !
- It is suggested that initially you enter just the surname and filter these result by searching on forename.
- As above you can further filter the results by including place names, vessel names and so forth.
- As with vessels, start with “photograph” if you want to see photographs of the individual.
- Note that within the archive we have extracts from census records featuring wherrymen. As yet we don’t have keywords setup for all of these people. These extracts are held as searchable PDF files and can be found in the archive by searching for “census records”.
Searching for publications.
- Enter “nwt publication” the search field and “Run search” .
- For a specific year, “Search within results” for that year .
- For a type of publication “Search within results” for example “journal” or “newsletter”. Note that our journals/newsletters are only made “public” 10 years after production (to preserve a membership “benefit” as members will have had hard copies).
Searching for Albion’s Log Books.
- Enter “albion log” as the initial search.
- For a specific year, “search within” for that year.
Searching within Committee Minutes.
We are adding keywords for the content of our minutes and will add the PDF versions of these minutes once they are 25 years old. Note that attendees are not included as keywords unless specifically mentioned. This is an ongoing process as many records are currently unavailable.
- Enter “minutes” as the initial search.
- Then enter whatever search string you require as the “search within” option.
Searching for an Archive Record Identifier.
- All records have an identifier of the form nwtnnnnnn. Some entries will have cross referenced to other archive records, to view such records just search on the record identifier.
You’ve Found Some Records, What Next ?
- When you’ve entered all your search criteria you may be lucky and have the record you’re looking for, more likely you will be presented with a list of records.
- The high-level view of each record will show a description and a thumbnail. The thumbnail may be clicked on to show a bigger image (note all images are low resolution, if higher resolutions are required for research you will need to contact our archive team).
- Each record will also contain a “More detail >>” button at bottom left (it also shows how many images are within the record), select this for further information. For publications such as past Journals this is where you will find the PDF file(s) which can be clicked upon to launch whatever PDF viewer you have installed on your system.
- For most NWT publications this “more” level will also contain the index fields and a page reference within the PDF file for the search field you are looking for.
- Some records will contain multiple files/photographs, these can be accessed from the “more” level.
- Some thumbnails that are difficult (ie too small) to read will have a PDF version to allow “zooming” to enlarge the view. Where there is no PDF you may need to use your browser zoom feature <CTRL><+> to zoom in (<CTRL><-> to zoom out afterwards).