Help

Welcome to the Vital Access Portal. Here’s how to get started finding documents, images, video, and other objects in the repository.

Basic Keyword Search

To do a simple keyword search of the repository,
  • Type your search term(s) in the blank text box, and then click the Search button.
Hints
  • You can use the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT when searching for multiple terms. (Note that Boolean operators must be typed in all capital letters.)
  • If you type more than one search term without specifying a Boolean operator, the system assumes there is an OR between the terms and will find objects that have at least one of your terms in indexed fields.
  • You can search using a phrase, which must be in quotation marks, for example, "road warriors."
  • You can use wildcards in your search. A question mark (?) represents a single wildcard character, and an asterisk (*) represents one or more wildcard characters.
  • Search results are displayed in order of relevance on the List of Titles page. Search results are weighted more heavily if your search term matches a term found in an object's Title or Creator field.

Other Searches You Can do

To see a table of ALL the objects in the repository sorted by created date,
  • Click the Show All link.
To see the titles only of ALL the objects in the repository sorted alphabetically,
  • Click the Browse links in the menu bar. You can choose to browse by other indexes such as creator, subject, and collections.
To do a precise keyword search using multiple terms and filters such as date range,
  • Click the Advanced Search link in the menu bar.
To do a keyword search of parent collections in the repository,
  1. Click the Advanced Search link in the menu bar.
  2. On the resulting Advanced Search screen, use the Search Collections option.
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