Skip to Main Content

ArchivesSpace at UNI

Search in ArchivesSpace

You can search UNI ArchivesSpace by keyword, title, creator, descriptive notes, or identifier (collection record series number). We recommended using “Keyword” as it will search the entire text of a finding aid.

Start with broad search terms and look through the results before narrowing your search. Please note that some terms and names have changed throughout UNI’s history, such as departments, college newspaper titles, and student organizations. You may need to try a variety of search terms, and you may need to try searching your terms in a variety of formats. For example, searching for “maucker union,” maucker union (without quotes), and “student union” will give you different results, so trying these variations may be helpful in your search.

Most collections have a finding aid available online. For collections that do not have a finding aid or inventory, please contact SC&UA staff at libarchives@uni.edu for further assistance.

Starting your Search

On the ArchivesSpace homepage, there are two options to search collections. You may either click on the magnifying glass icon, which brings you to the ArchivesSpace search page, or use the search box at the bottom of the page.

Search options in ArchivesSpace

The default setting option searches all record types, including:

  • Collection records
  • Archival records (series, sub-series, file, and item-level records)
  • Digital objects
  • Names

Click on the plus sign to add additional search terms. To run your search, click the “Search” button.

Additional search options in ArchivesSpace

Search Tips

Use boolean operators to narrow your searches.

  • Use AND to find just results containing both keywords. Example: President AND assistant
  • Use OR to return results that contain one or both keywords. Example: President OR assistant
  • Please note that ArchivesSpace performs OR searches when multiple keywords are in the same field. For example, “President assistant” returns the same results as “president OR assistant.”
  • Use NOT to exclude terms from the results. Example: President NOT assistant.
  • Use quotation marks (“”) to enclose terms that should be found together. Example: “Department of Art.”
  • Use an asterisk (*) to expand your search. Search for librar* to find words starting with “librar”, such as library, libraries, librarian, and librarians.

Advanced Searching

You can narrow your search by limiting the fields being searched. The default options searches for keywords throughout all record fields.

You can select Limit to collections to search only collection-level records or select Limit to digital materials to only search digital records.

Dropdown search options in ArchivesSpace screencap

You can also limit your search to:

  • Titles of materials
  • Creators of collections or objects
  • Notes that describe collections, objects, or creators
  • Identifier (collection record series number) that is unique to each collection
  • Subject (please note that SC&UA does not currently use subject headings; the subjects in ArchivesSpace belong to the UNI Museum collections)

ArchivesSpace field dropdown search options

 

**Please note that not all records include dates, creators, or descriptive notes. SC&UA does not currently use subject headings in collection finding aids. The subjects currently included in ArchivesSpace related to UNI Museum collections. Please reach out to Museum staff with any questions.**

Viewing / Filtering Results

On the search results page, you can sort the results by:

  • Relevance (default view)
  • Alphabetically by title
  • Chronologically by year

Results can be filtered by by record types, subjects, and related names. These filters are listed in the column to the right of search results. The number to the right of each filter link shows the the number of results in each category.

Use the search box on the right to search within results.