Text-Only Version
Jump to: A Note on Truncation | Displays | Video | Electronic Facsimiles/Text-based Materials | Technical Note
How to use this Site
Searches
There are three ways of executing a search:
- Collection or Subject
Click on a preselected subject heading for images or sound, type a subject heading in the browse box. The results will be displayed as grid, or gallery, of thumbnail images. Clicking on the image itself, at anytime in any format, will pull up the full screen image, visual image or link to the sound recording. Sound recordings lack any visual representation and are best viewed as brief or full records. They are displayed with a choice of access method and cataloging number in the gallery display. This method of searching provides an easy introduction to the site, allowing the user to browse through a gallery of related images. By viewing the full records for each image, the user can explore the multiple subject headings used to catalogue each item as suggestions for further searches. The subject headings provided are but a small sample of the many included in the list of authorized terms. We have made available a list of subject terms (pdf format) used for this project as well as a list of terms for ship types (pdf format) (not all of which are represented in the project). - Keywords
Enter any combination of keywords, whether single words or a phrase, connected by the operators: AND, to limit the search to records including all of the terms entered; OR, to expand the search to any of these; NOT, to exclude a term from the search. Then click on the search button. This method will search all relevant fields, including extended descriptions, for words or phrases that match those entered in the search box. The results of this search will automatically be displayed as a sequence of brief records. - Multiple Fields
Type in or select terms from the drop-down list for the fields provided. You can further limit your search by activating one of the radio buttons or check boxes presented at the bottom of the page. Click on the search button after selecting the desired combination of choices. Results will be displayed as a sequence of brief records. This search method enables the user to restrict the search to specific choices and combinations of criteria.
We have prepared a list of ship names (pdf format) for all vessels included in this project. To limit your search only to the ship name and date of construction, use the Guided Search options "All of these" in "Ship Name".
A Note on Truncation
Use ? to truncate a word:
- steam? finds "steamer" or "steamers" or "steamboat" or "steamboats."
- cargo ship? finds "cargo" and "ship" or "ships" or "shipping."
Use ? for internal truncation:
- chris? colum? finds "Christopher" and "Columbus" or "Columbo"
Top of Page Displays
Visual images are stored in three differently sized derivatives: thumbnail, one-quarter size, and full. The results of searches can be displayed as thumbnails, either in the form of a grid of images, referred to as a gallery, or as a sequence of brief records with the thumbnail to the left and the title, the date, and the documentor listed to the right. Search results can also be viewed as a series of full records (see below). Keyword or Multiple Field searches will automatically be displayed as a sequence of brief records.
The full record is displayed with a quarter-size image to the right and a complete list of relevant metadata to the left. This can be accessed by clicking on the text beneath the thumbnail image in the gallery format or by clicking on the title in the brief record display. The full screen derivative appears when clicking on the image itself, whether thumbnail or quarter-size, in any display mode. A full record of related metadata will appear below.
Video
To access video clips, click on the "external resource" image or the URL associated with the record, both of which will appear in the brief and full record views. Video clips may be available for QuickTime, RealPlayer, or both. QuickTime software can be downloaded for free from Apple Computer's QuickTime page. RealPlayer can be found (also for free) on Real Audio's website: real.com
Electronic Facsimiles/Text-based Materials
Records describing text-based materials will contain a field labelled "Available At." By clicking on the URL in that field, you will be taken out of the current SiteSearch database and into a database especially created to view books, journals, and other text-based materials. This database allows you to search texts, browse texts, or page through all of the texts related to the Great Lakes Maritime Collection. To return to the SiteSearch database, click on the "Home" button.
Technical Note
Please note that full-text searching for the electronic-facsimile texts in our collections is based on uncorrected OCR (Optical Character Recognition) results. While such text is often highly accurate, it will contain errors that may affect your search results. In particular, texts with the following characteristics are particularly prone to error (in some cases, accuracy for such texts is so low that we have decided not to attempt to provide full-text searching):
- Hand-written texts;
- Texts that contain diacritics;
- Texts that contain non-Latin scripts;
- Texts that contain obsolete characters (including the "long S" [looks like an "f"]);
- Texts that are printed in a font in which the letters are difficult for the software to differentiate.