Help

Help Topics:

• About the Interface
• Finding Items in Multiple Collections or Single Collections
• Keyword Tips
• Working With Results
• Saving Results
• Viewing Items
• Asking for Help

About the Interface

Our new Digital Collections interface uses "faceted browsing" (also called "faceted navigation" or "guided navigation").    This type of interface has become common in e-commerce Web sites, and is becoming more widely adopted by libraries for catalogs and digital collections.  

Faceted browsing combines the traditional "search" and "browse" functions into one tightly integrated interface.   As you look for items using the Web site, every navigational choice you make presents you with a new set of results to consider.   Did you get too many results?  Narrow down your result set by clicking links in the "Narrow Results By" section.   Too few results?   Expand your result set back out by canceling individual facet selections (by pressing the X next to the term in the breadcrumb trail).

• Read more about the development of this system

Finding Items in Multiple Collections or Single Collections

Find Items in All Featured Collections

Entering search terms into this box will find matching items by looking across all of Duke's featured digital collections. 

Find Items Within a Single Collection

There are multiple ways to find items within a single collection:

Start from a collection's homepage.   Each collection has a homepage where you'll find contextual information, along with links to browse different areas in the collection.  In the left-hand Current Collection feature box, enter search terms to locate items only within that collection.

Search all collections and narrow results by collection.    Enter search terms into the "Search all Digital Collections" box.  If results are found in more than one collection, you will see collection icons in the Narrow By section.  Click on the desired collection to limit the results to only that collection.  If all matching results from a global search come from the same collection, you will see the corresponding Current Collection box on the left-hand side.

Keyword Tips

Basic Keyword Tips

Capitalization:
EXAMPLE: lincoln

Don't worry about capitalizing your search terms.  Lowercase terms will work.

Multiple Terms:
EXAMPLE: cat dog

Keywords separated by spaces default to "AND" search; only results that match all terms are returned.  cat dog is the same as cat AND dog.  Only results that match both terms will be returned.

Exact Phrase:
EXAMPLE: "new york"

Use quotations to indicate a phrase where the sequence of terms is important.

Wildcards:  * ?
EXAMPLE: viol*
EXAMPLE: fr?nc?

Use wildcard characters like * for multiple characters or ? for a single character to find terms with similar spellings.
viol* will find results with "violin," "viola," "violet," "violent"
fr?nc? will find results with "france" or "french," but not "francisco"

Stemming:

Don't worry about plurals and verb tenses when issuing search terms--the system will take care of a lot of that for you.  Searching for "car" returns items with "cars."  "Likewise, searching for "drive" will match "driving," "drives," "driver," "drove," and other tenses.

Boolean Operators:  AND / OR
EXAMPLE: "new york" OR boston
EXAMPLE:   "new york" AND boston

Using OR returns results that match any of the terms entered.   Using AND returns results that match all of the terms entered and is the same as separating terms by spaces.

NOT
EXAMPLE: lincoln NOT abraham

Use NOT to exclude items that contain the term after NOT.  The above example will yield results with Lincoln, Nebraska and Lincoln Tunnel, but not Abraham Lincoln.

Advanced Keyword Tips

Grouping:
EXAMPLE: gedney AND (car OR truck)

Using parentheses is a good way to combine searches.  The above example will return results that contain the term "gedney", but only if they also contain either "car," "truck," or both of those terms.

Fuzzy Searches:  ~
EXAMPLE: theater~

The tilde (~) matches terms that differ only by a small number of letters.  The above keyword search matches terms such as "theatre," "teacher," "heater," "treasure," and "leather."  Fuzzy searches are useful when you are unsure about a term's spelling, or if there are multiple possible spellings.

Plus / Minus  + -
EXAMPLE:   +camera -kodak

+ and - operate the same way as AND & NOT.  The above example will return all records that match the term "camera," but do not have the term "kodak".

Boosting Terms:  ^
EXAMPLE:  piano^5 OR polka

Using a carat (^) with a number next to it will boost the importance of that term in determining the relevance of the retreived results.  In this example, items with the term "piano" will be considered five times as relevant as those with "polka," though items matching either will be retrieved.

Working With Results

Narrow Results By.  Here, you will find "facets" or attributes of the items that are in the collections.   Selecting links in this area will winnow down your set of results to items that match that particular facet.  These options will change at each step, depending on the characteristics of the current result set.  

Selecting "hair tonic" will return 59 items from the current set of results, all of which will be advertisements for hair tonic.

• Show More.  By default, only the four most common attribute values from the current result set are presented (in order of frequency).  Click "Show More" to display all of the possible values.

Search Within Results.   Entering terms into this box will maintain the current search, while adding additional keywords to the limit the result set.

Selection History.  In the breadcrumb trail under the main banner, you will see a history of the facet selections and keywords you have issued to show the current set of results.  You may remove any of these choices, regardless of the order, by clicking the blue X.  Your result set will expand each time you remove an item from your facet selection history.

Changing the Display of Results.   

• Grid vs. List View: 
  The Grid view allows you to see several image thumbnails all at once in the results, though it only displays the title of each item.  To reveal more information about items in the results, switch to List view.  From any set of results, click on the item title to see all of the item details, or click the thumbnail image to see a larger version of the image.
  
  
• Results Per Page: 
  Use this option to change the number of items displayed on each page of the search results. 
  
  
• Sort By: 
  By default, results will be returned in relevance order, or, how closely they match the keyword terms and facet selections you have made.  You may re-sort the results based on other fields by using this option.

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Saving Results

Bookmarks.  You may bookmark an item or a set of search results to return to at a later time.   You may use your browser's "Add to Favorites" or "Bookmark this Page" feature.  Most browsers have a shortcut for this action: try Ctrl-D (Windows) or Command-D (Mac).

Advanced Result Saving.    Using the "Add To" section below the images or results, you can save an item or set of items to a social bookmarking service such as del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/).  With individual items and multiple-item result sets, you may add personal notes, and reorganize items and sets of items into new groupings by applying tags.   Your custom annotated results can be used to assist you in your research, or can be shared with others.

Canned Searches.   Each item and each search result has a stable URL, so you can copy the URL from the address bar and link to items or sets of results from other Web pages or documents.  Using a URL to link to a specific set of results is often called a "canned search."  

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Viewing Items

You may choose from multiple views for each item. 

• Details:  
  Shows the full bibliographic record for the item, along with a thumbnail.
  
  
• Medium Image: 
  Shows the image at a medium size within the search interface, along with some details about the item.  Medium images are 625 pixels wide, regardless of the orientation.
  
  
• Large Image:   
  Shows the image at full-size in the browser window.  Please note that you may need to click on the image again to zoom in to full magnification and use your browser's scroll bars to pan around to different parts of the image.
  

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Asking for Help

If you experience any difficulty using the system, or would like help, we encourage you to speak with our library staff.  

• Save Time / Ask Us!: 
  At the top of every page is a "Save Time / Ask Us!" button, which will bring you to many options for contacting us, including an email form, live help, and phone numbers.
  
  
• Contact Information: 
  The collection box on the left-hand side of each item and collection-specific page contains the name, Web site link, and phone number of the department best suited to assist you with your questions.

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