Searching Tips for William Purcell Digital Images Database

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All searches can be refined by selecting one or more of the building types listed on the search screen.

The images in this database fall into the following categories:

• Apartments
• Awards
• Banks
• Commercial
• Exhibitions
• Factories
• Fraternal lodges
• Furniture
• Government
• Hotel
• Houses
• Monuments
• Religious
• Schools

Entering any of the above terms as either a keyword or subject search should retrieve all relevant records.

The main text entry box contains two possible types of searches:

A. KEYWORD SEARCHING
Searching keywords in this database is very similar to searching some of your favorite Web search engines. A keyword search will retrieve any record that has the term you enter in any one of several fields, including creator, title, caption, annotation, note, description, or subject terms. The database recognizes the following three operators:

+ equals the "AND" operator. If you want all of your search results to have every term you enter, enter the "+" operator between each word.

- equals the "NOT" operator. If you want to exclude certain records if a keyword is present, use the "-" operator before each term to be excluded.

[BLANK SPACE] equals the "OR" operator. Leaving a blank space between words is an implied "OR" search.

NOTE: This database now supports phrase searching, so you can enter "St. Paul" (quotes included) in the keyword search box, and only retrieve records where these two words occur in the order specified. Without the quotes to indicate phrase searching, this search would instead look for records with either "St." OR "Paul" in the record.

B. ID# Searching
Every item in this database contains a unique identifier in the "Identifier" field of the item record. If you know the unique identifier for an image, simple enter it and select the "ID#" searching option.

You also can limit searches of this database by both city and decade in which the image was originally created. Note that all images in this database were created between 1907 and 1921.

This database is a participant in the IMAGES project. ©2002 Regents of the University of Minnesota. This site is maintained by the University of Minnesota Libraries. Last Updated Arpil 9, 2002.