The search screen allows you to search the database in several ways. Not every item in the database has information in every field yet. We are working on fully populating the database to make searches more effective.

Here are the search fields available to you and what they represent:

Title/Description - Most photographs have (or will soon have) a description. Put one or two words in the title /description field to find images relating to specific subjects. The fewer words the better since this search engine requires that every word be found in the listing.

Keywords - Most photos have something in the keywords field. Keywords are things like railroad, wedding, fire or other general terms. Again, too many words will return nothing because all must be found.

People - Try putting last names into the people field. Put one at a time unless you are actually llooking for a photo with a specific group. Since every name entered must be found one missing person will cause the photo to be ignored.

Event - The field is not currently being used.

Location - This is drop down list of the 10 towns we cover. Selecting one will limit your search to images tagged for that town. Leaving it blank will let you find anything in any of the towns that meets your other search criteria..

Category - This field is a drop down list that allows you to select from all the available categories of images. Selecting postcard will limit your search to postcard images. You can only select one category at a time.

Year - The approximate date the photo was taken, if known. You can enter a specific year. If you enter the first three digits you will get everything with a date in that decade. 190 for example will return images dated from 1900 to 1909.

Collection Name - This is a drop down box that lists the collections given to us for addition in the database. Selecting one of these will limit your search to that collection. You can then use other fields to narrow the search. With no collection specified the entire database is searched. So searching railroad in the entire database will find railroad images from several towns. Selecting the 'Oradell collection from Frank Vierling' will find only railroad images in Oradell.

There are some basic rules that apply to all searches using this program.

1 - The search is NOT case sensitive. smith is the same as SMITH

2 - The search is not position sensitive. Bogerts Mill in the description is the same as Mill Bogerts.

3 - Multiple words in a search field are connected by a logical AND. Putting house and automobile in the keyword field will find only photos of houses with automobiles in the picture.

4 - Dates, where we have them, are coded in theYear field. Putting 1925 in the field will find all photos dated 1925. Putting 192 will find all photos in the 1920s. Putting 193 and automobile in the keyword field will find photos taken in the 1930s with autos in the picture.

5 - The people field typically has first and last names so putting smith will find all smiths while john smith will yield only john smiths.

6 - Fields are independent. You can select postcard in the category field, 194 in the date field, and house in the keyword field and find all postcardsfrom the 1940s with houses.

7 - There is no OR search capability. You cannot search for people named smith OR jones. Searching for smith jones will return no photos because there is nobody in the database named smith jones or jones smith.

8 - Once you have entered some words you begin the search by clicking the RUN SEARCH button on the left below the search fields.

9 - Two other useful fields are to the right of the SEARCH button. The dropdown field that says l'List View' lets you select either list view or contact sheet. List view gives you a thumbnail and some details for each photo found. Contact sheet gives you only the thumbnail images and their filename. The text box labelled 'Show 10 Per Page' allows you to enter a new number that determines how many photo entries will be shown per page when the search is complete.

10 - Once you click search and get a list of images found you can click the thumbnail image to get a larger view.