Welcome to the National Archives Catalog. This video contains a series of lessons on searching
the Catalog. You can start your search here. I've typed "George Washington" and I can click on the
magnifying glass or enter on my keyboard. The search results page gives you so much information,
it can be overwhelming. Let's examine the page so you can understand what you are seeing. By
default, you get to see everything. Across the top of the page there are five simple filters:
available online: descriptions with digitized copies of records. Web pages:
these are archives [dot] gov web pages, and they are not Catalog descriptions. Documents: digitized
textual records. Images: these are digitized photographic and graphic images. And videos:
digitized motion picture records. By default your results are twenty per page, but you can
use this drop down menu to change the number of results you see. Let's look at the filters on the
left. These are how you can more precisely refine your results. Refined by data source. 95% of our
records have been described at the series level, but not all of those records have been digitized
and added to our Catalog. In this section you can see how many records have digital objects.
Those are pages that have been digitized. How many have the word that you're searching for,
in this case George Washington, but do not have digital images attached to them. And then you
can see how many web pages on archives [dot] gov include George Washington. You can also refine by
level of description. See our video "What is the Catalog?" for more information on the hierarchy
of records. Please note that digital images will only be attached at the item or file unit level.
You can also refine by type of materials. This is very helpful if know what kind of record you need
to find. If you're looking for a letter, select textual records. A poster or a photograph? Select
photographs and other graphic materials, and so on down the list. Refine by file format. This is
a more advanced way to search for records. Similar to the type of materials filter if you know the
kind of digital file you need you can select a file format filter. Let's scroll down further
and see refined by location. In this filter we see all of our locations around the country that
have records in the Catalog having to do with the subject you searched for. It's useful in
several ways. You can see where the bulk of the descriptions are, in this case here in Archives
I textual reference. It also will show you the extent of all the locations that have to do with
that subject. And if you're coming in person, it might help determine which location might be
a better fit to come and visit. Our final filter is refined by date. This allows you to filter your
results by decade, but dates can be deceiving. Let me show you an example of how this is the case.
Some descriptions in our Catalog have dates that may seem confusing. Let's look at this series:
"Case Files of Pension Applications Based on Service Completed in the Years 1817 to
Approximately 1903." You can probably expect to find Civil War service in this series, but the
dates for this series are circa 1935 to circa 2002. Doesn't seem to connect, does it? Go over
here to the details section. What you'll find is some more information. We'll slide down, and we'll
learn that the Creator, who is the Department of Veteran Affairs, compiled or maintained the series
between the dates 1935 to 2002. That's when they gather them together and this series was created,
but they gathered together records that document the period 1817 to 2002, so be sure to check the
dates, date notes, and other information in the details section to make sure you're finding the
right kind of records you need. Some series or file units are too large to manually scroll
through all the records attached to it. Often you may know a name or a topic that you'd like
to search for within these records. In this case, you can do a "search within." If you slide down in
the record you can see that this series has over 1 million file units described in the Catalog. In
order to search through these 1, 1 million-plus records click on "search within the series."
You're now in search within mode. In order to search for a specific word, phrase, or name,
come to this box here. Remove the wildcards. Add the name or term you're searching for, click the
magnifying glass, and now we're showing that you search for the word "Sheridan" within this series,
and you have 91 results. A much smaller group of records from the 1 million records you started
with. Our citizen archivists have been hard at work transcribing records. The text they have
transcribed are now part of our search engine. Here's an example in the series "Records of
Divisions, 1917 to 1920." These World War I records tell tales from the trenches. You can
search within the series for words that may have been transcribed by volunteers. Click on "search
within this series." Navigate to the text box, remove those wildcards, put in a term you want to
search. I'm searching for "afraid," and clicking enter. Now we've searched within these records,
and found 27 examples where the word "afraid" is in the record. Here is a quick reference for
the most common types of search expressions and the operators that you can use to help
you search the Catalog. You can use boolean operators: "and," "or," "not." For example,
"Harry AND Truman" will return results with both the term "Harry" and "Truman." "Truman
NOT Harry" will return the results containing "Truman," but not including "Harry." We find the
kind of search we use most often is exact phrase searching using quotation marks. This looks for
the exact phrase inside the quotes. The Catalog has an advanced search that gives you additional
options to narrow down your search. You can find the advanced search to the right of every search
box on the home page and within the Catalog at the top of the page. The advanced search page
allows you to refine your search parameters. You can use each of the advanced search options alone,
or you can begin with multiple filters applied. Combine two or more from the same data source,
or use them in combination with the search term field at the top. To select multiple types within
one filter hold down the ctrl key and click. You can also use this to deselect. You can also move
to additional filters and continue using the ctrl key. One of the questions we receive most often
is about searching for an individual's name. On our page "National Archives Catalog Guide
for Genealogists and Family Historians," we detail how to do a search. While most
descriptions in the Catalog do not include the names of all individuals found in that record,
the National Archives still might have records about the person. Here are some tips for searching
for an individual's name. You can search on the person's full name in first name,
last name order. You can search on the surname only, you can search on variant spellings of the
surname, or on variant spellings of the first name, including Americanized versions. Don't
be discouraged if you can't find the person you're looking for with a name search. If you
know an individual participated in a particular event, search for that event in the Catalog,
and look within the records for the person you're looking for.