Help: Search Strategies
Text Searching from the Homepage
There are three search options on left side of the homepage: a keyword search box, a category browse, and filters for place name and subject.
Map Searches from the Homepage
The homepage features a world map for geographic searches.
Option 1: The user can pan the map with the mouse and zoom with the controls at the upper left. When the desired area is in view, the user can click the blue “Search here” button at the lower left. Only records that fall within the geographic extents visible on the map will be displayed.
Zoom, pan, or define a region on the map, then click "Search here"
Option 2: Blue marker icons indicate the center point of a resource. Cluster icons show multiple points and need to be zoomed in on to find single icons.
Select a single icon and click the link in the popup to open a specific item.
Select a single marker icon to open a specific item.
Refining the Search Results
Once an action has taken place on the homepage, the user will be taken to a search results page. The text search box will still be present at the top, but additional options for filtering will be available. This is accomplished by selected terms under the filters on the left of the screen.
Place: a text filter for place names that were assigned to the resource by a cataloguer
Resource Class: allows a user to filter by only Datasets, Maps, Web Services, Imagery, Websites, Collections, or Other.
Resource Type: a further refinement that describes geometry type for datasets and cartographic genres for maps
Subject: drawn from Library of Congress and Getty Art & Architecture terms
Year: a widget that a user can limit years by typing in a start and/or end date
Time Period: an aggregated grouping of dates by century, half century, decade, or half-decade
Creator: a person or organization that directly developed the resource. For maps, in may include the surveyor, cartographer, and lithographer. For geospatial data, it can include names of specific individuals or agencies.
Provider: The source, host, or distributor of the resource
Public/Restricted: Public records can be accessed by anyone. Restricted records require an institutional login or authentication protocoal to access.
Results from an initial keyword search of street network can be further refined using the filters on the left of the screen.
Understanding the Item Page
When a record is selected, the user is taken to its item page. This page displays links and information about the resource.
Data Preview
For some records, the top of the page is a map inset. If the data includes a geospatial web service, the user will be able to click on entities within the service to see attribute information about it. If a digitized map is available via an IIIF server, this inset will be a zoomable image.
Links panel
Visit Source: This is an external link back to the original item page for the resource
Web services: displays the web service address that can be copied into a desktop or online map application Read more
Metadata: displays supplemental metadata
Cite: creates a basic citation that can be copied and styled. Read more
Open in ArcGIS: opens the item in ArcGIS Online
Downloads panel
direct download of an item
Related Items
At the bottom of the item page, there may be links to related records from the same source or a link to a parent collection record that describes the source.