Hampshire Archives and Local Studies
Catalogue help
Basic searching
Choose Search all, type one or more keywords in the AnyText field and click SEARCH
- The search is not case sensitive, e.g. andover finds Andover
- john smith finds all records which contain both words, wherever they appear
- The star symbol finds words with common roots, e.g. child* finds child, child's, children
Results are displayed in a hitlist showing basic details; Finding No, Title, Date. To sort your hits by Finding No, Title or Date, click on the relevant column header. NB: a date sort will bring all invalid and blank dates to the top of the list.
Click on Full details to see which collection your hit belongs to and all additional information such as further description, access conditions, or a digital image.
A hitlist will not appear if your search finds more than 40,000 hits. If this happens, or there are too many hits to go through, click on New search/refine search, type another keyword and then click NARROW. Your hitlist will then contain hits from your original search narrowed down by the second search. There are also options to EXCLUDE a keyword, or WIDEN your search.
Advanced search
This search offers the option to search over several fields at the same time. Use it to search for a keyword or words in one particular collection, or for a range of dates*, or for a particular type of document which is likely to appear in the title of a record (e.g. will, map, electoral register, photograph).
* NB: searching by date always results in a slower search. You can choose one year, a range of years, e.g. 1880-1895 (but not 1880-95), c1900 which will search 5 years either side of the date, or 19th century which will search 1801-1900.
Other searches
These use specific parts of the database only, i.e. just library books, audio-visual archives, documents with digital images attached, or whole collections.
Search settings
Word Options
The default search is set to AND so if you type john smith, the search will find all records which contain both the words john and smith, wherever the two words appear. The OR option will find all records which just contain the word john and also all records which just contain the word smith. The PHRASE option will find all records where the words john smith appear together.
Field Options
Used in the same way as Word Options for a search involving keywords in more than one field.
Online catalogue links
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