How do I Search?

Getting started

There are three ways to search or browse our Digital Library from the home page:

Browsing

Browse all content, either by clicking on ‘Browse’ (next to the search box) or the ‘Browse by” area. You can browse using the following options:

  • Collections: browse all digital collections held at LSE Digital Library.
  • People and organisations: browse all people and organisations to which LSE digital collections relate
  • Subjects: browse all subjects to which LSE digital collections relate
  • Gallery View: browse digital objects only

Browsing collections

On the home page click on “Collections” under “Browse by” to get a list of all collections available. From that page you can browse the treeview, read more about the collection and find all digital objects of that particular collection.

Searching

Users can browse using the following options:

  • Basic search: enter a specific term or phrase in the search box, eg "annual reports".
  • Advanced search: this option shows in the drop-down menu when you click on the search box and allows you to narrow a search or apply filters.

Treeview search

If you have found records within a particular collection relevant to your research, you can browse or search them by using the ‘Treeview Search’ option.

When selecting a search result, you will get a treeview showing the hierarchical tree of all the records included in that collection. This also includes a “Quick search” box, to help you quickly locate specific descriptions in a deep hierarchy.

If you would like to view all the descriptive levels in a hierarchy in a 'Browse page', you can enter ‘*’ in the quick search box, press ‘enter’ and click the ‘Browse all descriptions’ button at the bottom of the Quick search results. This will redirect you to a browse page, where you can use features such as the sort button and facet filters to navigate the descriptions.

Clicking on a description title in the hierarchy browse page will direct you to the related level description view page, showing the location of that record within the standard treeview. You can use your browser’s back button to return to where you left off in the hierarchy browse page.

Tips for searching

If you enter multiple search terms these will be searched for with an "AND" operator by default. For example, searching for ‘annual reports’ will return all records that contain the terms 'annual' and 'reports'. To search for a phrase, use double quotation marks, eg “annual reports”.

  • You can conduct a wildcard search by using an asterisk at the end of a word, eg ‘politic*’ will search for ‘politics’, ‘political’, ‘politician’ etc.
  • Use Boolean operators ("OR", "AND", "NOT") to broaden or narrow your search. For example, "annual NOT reports" will only bring up results with ‘annual’ but not ‘reports’; "annual OR reports" will bring up results that contain either ‘annual’ or ‘reports’. There are more Boolean operator options.
  • The search box has a language detection tool which shows possible matches when you type in 3 letters or more. Suggestions appear in a drop-down below the search box and continue to narrow as you enter further text. Matches are organised by record type as follows: collections, collecting areas, people and organisations, subjects. If the right term appears in the search box drop-down, click on it to see the record in full. When multiple results for a record type exist, you can click on ‘all matching descriptions’ to view all records for a particular record type.
  • Facet filters on search result pages can be used to narrow your search further. They appear on the left-hand side menu. Only facets that relate to the results will be displayed so if a facet has 0 or only 1 result, it will not be shown. Potential facets include:
    • Part of: limits results to records which are part of the selected collection
    • Collection area: limits results to records which are part of the selected collection sub-group
    • Subject: limits results to records relating to the selected subject
    • Genre: limits results to those records relating to the selected type of material (e.g. digitised material; born-digital material)
    • Level of description: limits results to those records that match the selected level of description (e.g. collection, series, folder, digital object)
    • Media type: limits results to those records with a digital object attached that matches the selected media type (image, audio, text, video, or other).

Save for later using Clipboard

You can save any level of description and/or digital object in the Clipboard. The Clipboard icon is a paperclip and appears on all collection description search and browse results. Clicking on it adds the result to your Clipboard. To view your Clipboard, click on the icon at the top of the page.

For a more comprehensive guide on how to use the software behind our Digital Library - called 'AtoM' - see AtoM documentation.