Documentation

For General Users

Searching

Note: Searches always operate only on those items available to you with your permissions.

Thumb galleries

All searches are returned as thumb galleries.

Clicking a thumb opens its item page.

The thumb gallery shows at the top left how many items have been returned by the search, and there is page by page navigation available at the top or bottom of the page.

Options available on a thumb gallery page are

• Sort items according to – a variety of criteria, usually including by date of upload.
• Show less or more detail.
• Items per page – set the number of items to be displayed per page. Any number from 1 upwards can be used.

Note that these options will persist for your session regardless of what type of search you do.

Explore / browse all

This displays all of the items available to you.

Note that in this case the Search returned 'n' figure is the total number of items available to your logged / non-logged in status.

Quick search

Quick search might also be called - for example - Search, Find etc…

Note: Search terms entered are shown here as italicised.

Type in the word or phrase you are searching for, and as you type suggestions from the data will appear. You can click any of the suggestions, or click the ‘Search’ button, or use the keyboard return key.

Use of a wildcard character

The wildcard (*) can be used in place of characters to widen the search. For example air* will find air, aircraft, airport etc… where these data exist. Similarly silver* will find silver, Silverstone, silverfish etc…

Narrowing quick searches (Boolean operators)

When searching for more than one word, or to omit words from a search, AND, NOT and OR can be used.

Here are some examples

• A search for duck AND mallard will find only items that have both words in their records.
• A search for duck NOT mallard will find items with duck in their data and exclude items that also have mallard in their data.
• A search for duck OR mallard will find items that contain either duck or mallard.

Phrase Searching

A phrase can be found by placing quotes around it. For example, a search for north Yorkshire will return items with either north or Yorkshire in their data, whereas searching for "north Yorkshire" returns only items with the exact phrase north Yorkshire.

Subject search

Where a subject hierarchy is available ‘Subject Search’ will be on the menu.

Subjects with lower levels are indicated by +. Click the + to open the next level down.

Select subjects for searching by clicking in the box beside the term. As many as are required can be selected.

Select how you would like the subjects to be searched from the pick list. Options are

• Find items with any of the selected subjects including children. (This is the default)
• Find items with any of the selected subjects.
• Find items with all of the selected subjects.

Field search (Advanced search)

Metadata fields can be searched individually or in combination.

In combination the options available in the dropdown near the top of the page are

• Items must satisfy all of the search criteria.
• Items must satisfy at least one of the search criteria.

Various search criteria can be selected for each field, for example ‘Matches’, ‘Contains’, ‘Starts with’, Ends with’ etc…

The search boxes can be reset to empty with the ‘Reset’ button.

Click the ‘Search’ button to run the search.

View Collections

Where collections are available ‘Collections’ will be on the menu.

Clicking one of the collection thumbs displayed opens the collection header or folder, which shows some of the items in the collection and a link to view all of the items in the collection.

Map search

Where map search is available the geographic locations of a search are displayed. The map pins show how many items are at the location they are marking, and clicking an item opens its item page.

Refine a search / drill down

After any search is carried out the Refine your search option is available on the menu.

Refining a search uses the same page as field search, but searches only on the items returned by the previous search, which is detailed at the top of the page.

Search history

The search history maintains a record of all searches carried out by you during your current session. Click any search in the list to re-run it.

When you close your browser the search history is cleared.