Search Tips

The University of Chicago Finding Aid Database can be searched using basic keywords, phrases or boolean operators. All searches are case-insensitive.

It is not necessary to include punctuation in your queries. For example, a search for "smith john" will also return results that include "smith, john".

Numbers are treated as a character string: e.g. 1907 will retrieve any occurrence of that number even if it appears in a box number, folder number, folder heading date, etc.

Basic Searches

Basic searches are usually include one or more basic search terms. If more then one term is given they are ANDed together automatically.
anthropology
epic poem

Advanced Searches

To search for a specific phrase, surround that phrase with quotation marks. "Samuel King"

All search terms are ANDed together by default. To search for Samuel or King issue a search like:
Samuel OR King

If you would like to ensure that a word does not appear in a document you can "not" that word by prefixing it with a -. So to locate finding aids that contain Samuel but don't contain King your search would look like:
Samuel -King

To search for finding aids that have a specific term in the collection name you can prefix that term with title:.
title:King

To search for finding aids that have a specific term in the inventory you can prefix that term with inventory:.
inventory:King

Note: Any of the above queries can be used together to form very complex queries.

Wildcards

Both * and ? are supported as wildcards and can be placed at any location in a search term. For example, car*, *eer, car*r, car??r will all match the word career