Using the CofC ArchivesSpace Finding Aid System: Searching CofC ArchivesSpace

Use CofC ArchivesSpace to search or browse finding aids for more information about the manuscript collections, audiovisual materials, and institutional records held by the archival repositories at the College of Charleston. These include the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture and Special Collections. Links to digital materials are included when available. 

CofC ArchivesSpace gives you the option to search by keyword, title, creator, subject, descriptive notes, or by identifier (collection call number). Knowing the purpose of your search will help you decide how to use ArchivesSpace. Collection records can also be browsed.

There are two ways to access search functionality via the CofC ArchivesSpace home page. To access the search page, you can click on the magnifying glass at the far right of the Browsing Bar or simply use the search box at the bottom of the home page. 

The searchable fields are:

• Keyword: Searches the entire text of the finding aid.
• Title: Searches titles of the materials described, including records, series, and files within collections. If you know the precise title of the material you’re looking for, searching by title can be very helpful.
• Creator: Searches names of the persons, families, and organizations who created the collections.
• Subject: Searches by subject headings assigned to materials by archivists.
• Identifier: Searches by identifier, which is a unique call number by which materials are tracked and requested.

Record types allow you to customize the type of records you want a search to return:

• Limit to collections will only return records for collections, rather than people, subjects, series, and files.
• Limit to digital materials will only return records, folders or items that contain digital materials.

You may select a date range to limit the search results chronologically. Searching by date is approximate, and results may fall outside the date range you enter.

You may construct a more complex search by selecting the plus sign + icon and adding additional search parameters.

After entering your terms, click the Search button. 

• Searches are not case sensitive.
• You may search for phrases by including quotation marks (e.g. “television scripts”)
• By default, searches with three or fewer search terms return results containing all of the search terms. Searches with four or more search terms return results containing most of the search terms. You may add OR and NOT to change this behavior (e.g. Stiles OR Morse or art NOT British).
• You may add a tilde ~ to search for search terms within a specified number of words of one another (e.g. “business Charleston”~5 will return results where the term "business" occurs within 5 words of the term Charleston).
• Wildcard symbols ? and * help return a greater number of relevant results by searching for variant spellings and forms of search terms simultaneously.
  • ? replaces a single letter in a search term (e.g. searching colo?r will returned both color and colour).
  • *  replaces any number of letters at the end of a search term (e.g. searching educat* will return educate, educated, education, educational, and educator).
  • ? and  *  may not be used as the first character of a word.
  • To use a wildcard in combination with another search term (e.g. wom?n suffrage), use the + icon to create another row and enter each search term in a separate row.

Please contact Special Collections or the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture for help finding collection material and to make appointments to access material.

Special Collections will respond to questions Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM.

The Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture will respond to questions Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM - 4:30 PM.

Use boolean operators to narrow your searches.

• Use AND to only find results containing both keywords. Example: garden AND horticulture

• Use OR to return results with containing one or both of the keywords. Example: garden OR horticulture

• CofC ArchivesSpace performs OR searches when multiple keywords are in the the same field. garden horticulture will return the same results as garden OR horticulture

• Use NOT to exclude terms from the results. Example: garden NOT horticulture

• Use quotation marks "" to enclose terms that should be found together. Example: "Horticultural Gardens"

• Use an asterisk * to expand your search. Search for librar* to find words starting with librar, such as library, libraries, librarian, and librarians.