Searching the Archives

Basic Search

Begin a basic search by entering your search terms in the search box on the ARC home page. You may limit the search by record type, searchable fields, and date.

• Record types allow you to customize the type of records you want a search to return
  • Collection: Searches using this will only return records of complete collections, rather than people, subjects, series, and files.
  • Digital Materials: Searches using this will only return records of the materials that have been digitized.
• The searchable fields are
  • Keyword: Searches the entire texts of the finding aids.
    • We recommend keeping Keyword as the searchable type because it searches the entire text.
  • Title: Searches titles of the materials described, including collection records and the series and files within collections. If you know the precise title of the thing you are looking for, searching by title can be very helpful.
  • Creator: Primarily searches the names of the persons, families, and organizations who created the collections. Please note that limiting by “Creator” will primarily search only creators of collections, not individual records or items within collections. Most creators are connected only at the collection level and not at series or file level.
  • Subject: Searches by subject headings assigned to materials by archivists and librarians, e.g. United States history.
  • Notes: Searches the processing information, which gives insight into who arranged the collection and the various alterations made to the collection.
  • Identifier: Searches by identifier, which is a unique number by which materials are tracked and requested.
• Searching by date is approximate, and results may fall outside the date span you enter.
  • For example, if you search for records between 1970 and 1990, your results will likely show collections and series with broader date ranges, such as a result with a date span of 1900-1999 since that date range includes the years 1970-1990.
• You may construct a more complex search by selecting the + icon and adding additional search parameters.

Filtering Search Results

Once you’ve done a search and are on the search results page, you can use the filter pane on the right side of the page to further limit and customize search results.

You may use the filter pane to filter by collection, record type, subject, and name.

You may also use the search bar at the top of the filter pane to create additional searches within the search results.

Phrasing Searches

• Searches are not case sensitive.
• You may search for phrases by including quotation marks (e.g. “Hugh McKean”). Putting keywords together in quotes looks for that exact phrasing.
• By default, searches with two or more search terms return results containing all the search terms. Our ARC database defaults to the AND Boolean. You may add OR or NOT to change this behavior (e.g. women OR athletes, or sports NOT football).
  • For example, use Hugh McKean (without double quotes) as the search term returns 1,753 results.
  • Using "Hugh McKean” (with quotes) as the search term returns 29 results. These results have both Marini and Basketball in their records.
  • Using Women Sports as the search term returns 32 results.
  • Using Women OR Sports as the search term returns 3,737 results. These results have either Women as a result or Sports as a result.
• Wildcard symbols ? and * help return a greater number of relevant results by searching for variant spellings and forms of search terms simultaneously.
  • ? replaces a single letter in a search term. It cannot be used as the first character though.
    • Using “wom?n” (no quotes) as the search term will return both women and woman.
  • * replaces any number of letters at the end of a search term. It cannot be used as the first character though.
    • Using “mission*” (no quotes) as the search term will return mission, missions, missionary, and missionaries.

ARC does not include all archival materials at Rollins. Materials not included here are:

• Materials that have been catalogued into special collections at Olin Library.
• Items held in Rollins Scholarship Online.
• Most digitized items in Rollins Digital Collections.
• Rollins Web Archives.
• Rollins Oral History Archives.

Archives are materials created or received by a person, family, or organization that are preserved because of the enduring value of the information they contain.

Collections are groups of materials assembled by a person, family, organization, or repository. They may be divided hierarchically into series, groupings, and files.

Containers are anything that houses or stores archival materials. A container might be a standard size archival box, an oversize box, a broadside folder, or a media case.

Digital records are born-digital and digitized materials that are available online.

Collection guides, also called finding aids or descriptive guides, are tools that help researchers find information in manuscript or archival collections and include information on the origin, extent, dates, contents, and subjects for the collection.

Repositories are institutions that hold archival materials.

Name records are the people, families, and organizations that create archival materials.

Subject records are topics, places, and genres used to describe the context and content of archival materials.