Before we get into the main part of this instructional post, here are a few additional search pointers:
- Looking for a specific keyword or phrase and want to return documents that only contain a specific keyword or phrase? Use quotation marks around the keyword or phrase to get results only containing that keyword or phrase.
- Search specific fields by entering the field name (dc.title, dc.date.issued) followed by a colon and a keyword. This particularly helpful if you are looking for a document that has a title with a keyword anywhere in the title rather than using the searching by title feature. For example, typing dc.title:boat in the search box will return search results for documents with “boat” somewhere in the title.
- Combining a search of specific fields can be done by using Boolean operators in the search box. For example, entering dc.date.issued:2010 AND dc.title:test in the search box will give results for documents published in 2010 and that have “test” somewhere in the title.
- It is also possible to do a wildcard search with an *. For example, entering boat* into the search box will return results for documents containing boat, boating, boathouse, and any other variants with the root boat-.
Last week a new search feature was added to the following digital collections:
Next we click on the link in the description to search all the Acts and Resolves 1692 to present day.
But what if we instead had a specific date or date range in mind? There are a few ways of going about this. First, we can simply navigate to a specific subcommunity or subcollection within the Acts and Resolves collection. The subcommunities and subcollections for the Acts and Resolves are organized by date. Here we’ve selected the subcollection for 1982.
The second way of going about this can be a little complicated but it is good to know about for collections without the handy search link in the description. To keep things simple, we will continue using the Acts and Resolves to demonstrate the second option to do a date range search. It is possible to do range searches for dates in specific date fields. The date field most useful for research is dc.date.issued since this field refers to when a document was published by a government entity.
To do a search for a specific timespan format the search like dc.date.issued:[1978 TO 1997] to return results inclusive of dates between 1978 to 1997. After the search result page refreshes navigate over to the Settings on the lower far left and select in the Sort By dropdown menu Date Issued Ascending. This will sort the results in order from 1978 to 1997.
To do a search for a specific timespan format the search like dc.date.issued:[1978 TO 1997] to return results inclusive of dates between 1978 to 1997. After the search result page refreshes navigate over to the Settings on the lower far left and select in the Sort By dropdown menu Date Issued Ascending. This will sort the results in order from 1978 to 1997.
For a wildcard search for anything beyond a specific date which includes that year format the search like dc.date.issued:[1978 TO *]. In theory this should return results up until present day but occasionally the search will only return results up to certain point. In this instance running the wildcard search for a date range like 1978 to present only returns results for 1978 to 2010.
Other ways to search within a specific date range include filtering by date. Or if you are just looking for single date using it as keyword in your search is a good method.
If a specific issue or topic is being researched in the context of Acts and Resolves and the exact year may not be known but at least the chapter number is, a Boolean search can be a powerful tool when the chapter number is combined with a keyword or phrase. For instance, entering “Chap. 0523” AND boats in the preset search results page for the entire Acts and Resolves collection will give you all the relevant results that mention Chapter 0523 and boats.
Suppose we are looking for a specific act issued in 1982 for designating a boat ramp in Plymouth Harbor as The Leo F. Demarsh Memorial Boat Ramp. In this scenario we know which chapter in the 1982 Acts and Resolves we are looking for, Chapter 0523. To immediately return the exact result we are looking for we can enter the query in 1 of 4 possible formats:
- “chap. #XXXX” (example: “chap. #0523”)
- “Chap. #XXXX” (example: “Chap. #0523”)
- “chap. XXXX” (example: “chap. 0523”)
- “Chap. XXXX” (iexample: “Chap. 0523”)
Similar approaches can be taken to searching specific subcommunities and subcollections in Bills (Legislative Documents) and House and Senate Journals, and the Massachusetts Registers after selecting the search link in the description in the header. Like the ones for the Acts and Resolves these links are preset for searches for the entire collection or specific subcommunities and subcollections.
If you want to get started on a search in the SLM Digital Collections and want to review the steps on how to get started, read our blog post from March that gives instructions how to begin. You can also read a post where we took a closer look at applying a search refining technique called a Boolean search to your SLM Digital Collections searches to yield more precise results.
Be sure to check out this post from January about browsing basics if you’re stumped about how to use the browsing filters.
You can always reach out to our reference department for assistance by emailing them at reference.department@mass.gov or calling 617-927-2590. Or if you are visiting our reading room, come up to the reference desk and someone can help you.
Emily Crawford
Technical Services Librarian
