Using the Virginia Heritage Database

To search for a word or phrase in the whole database, enter a word or phrase in the search line, and click on the Submit Query button. For example, if you search for slave within All Works, your search will return hits on slaves and slavery. If you add a space after the end of the word you will get only the precise word form slave.

Phrase Searching

If you want to find information concerning children mentioned with slaves then you can enter the word child in the second word or phrase field. You will notice that you have some control over how closely the words may appear to each other when searched. By default, the search is performed "within 40 characters," but this proximity value can be reset to 80 or 120 characters. A larger proximity value usually brings in more results, but also increases your chances of retrieving items that are proximate but not conceptually related. You may also decide on the relationship between the words, whether they are near, followed by, not near, or not followed by each other.

Constraining your searches allows you to target specific institution's guides or specific fields within each guide. In a sense, it combines multiple searching elements to provide a more refined search result. For example, if you wanted to search for information only within a guide's listing of items then you could choose "within Collection Components." See searching specific finding aid elements for more information. Generally speaking, however, you will want the search to be Full Text.

Also, if you want your search to only retrieve the collections from a certain institution choose it from the pull down list. In addition, if you simply want a list of that institution's online guides do not enter anything into any field and simply select the desired institution from the pulldown list.

Further constraining your search by the collection's title will help refine your search results. Even if you only know a word of the title (last name, society, institution) you can enter it into the field to reduce the number of retrieved results.

For example, if you type the word Faulkner into the "Search for a word or phrase" field and click submit, you are returned 127 guides. If you type Faulkner into the "Constrain by title" field you receive 101 results. But typing "fury" into the phrase field and "Faulkner" returns only 11 results.

By default, the search is performed "within 40 characters," but this proximity value can be reset to 80 or 120 characters. A larger proximity value usually brings in more results, but also increases your chances of retrieving items that are proximate but not conceptually related.

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How do I search specific finding aid elements?

Full Text:

Queries searched at this level will be retrieved from anywhere in the finding aid.

Scope/Content Info:

Queries searched at this level will only search terms located within the scope and content information of the finding aid. Scope and content notes generally provide an overview of the collection's content.

Biographical / Historical Information:

Queries searched at this level will only search terms located within the biographical and historical information of the finding aid. Biographical and historical notes generally place the records in a historical context, giving users a clearer sense of the entity being described.

Collection Organization Information:

Queries searched at this level will only search for terms located within the organization tag of the finding aid.

Collection Components:

Queries searched at this level will only search terms located within the contents of the finding aid. In most cases, guides that possess content-level description are much longer.

Administrative Info:

Queries searched at this level will only search terms identifying information such as collection access and restrictions, how the collection was acquired and how it may have been processed since its arrival.

Bibliographic Header only:

Queries searched at this level will only search terms found in the ead header (author, creator, publisher and revision of the finding aid).

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Viewing the Results

When you submit your search, you are returned a list of finding aids that match your search criteria. These are graded by the number of matches within the finding aid. If you did a constrain by institution only with no word phrase, it will say "0 matches" since there were no words searched. Each corresponding result is presented as a link to the full guide:

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Finding your Search Terms

Once you have followed one of the links to a specific guide, you may then want to find where specifically in the guide you word or words appear. You can do this one of two ways:

1. On the left of the browser window there is a "Find Text" option. Type your search term here and click the "Find Text" button. This will pull up your search term and also provide the name of the tag that contains it.

2. You will also want to click on the "Complete Guide" link on the upper left of the window. Once the entire guide loads, you can do a "Find in page" search. Click on the frame in which your desired keyword might be located (this will be your white window). Click on "Edit", and then "Find in Frame" or "Find in this page". You may also click in the text window and use the keyboard command: control + F

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