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MANY TOOLS for searching and browsing are available to help you get the most out of your research on this site. Keyword and advanced search options; reviewing your search history; browsing names, subjects, and library divisions; and exploring collection guides are all described in more detail below.
TO BEGIN a simple search, type one or more words into the keyword search box located at the top of every page. Search results appear as small images (thumbnails); these images link to more information (metadata) and larger images. NOTE: Searches do not include the texts of Collection Guides.
A word typed in the keyword box looks for that term in these fields: Image Caption, Subject, Book/Album Title ("Source"), Name, Notes, NYPL Call Number and Digital ID. By default, typing multiple words generates a search for instances where ALL the terms appear in a record, that is, an AND search.
Multiple search terms default to an "AND" search: all words entered must appear in each record
You can expand a search by typing "OR" between each of your search terms: then any of your search terms may appear in an image record.
Partial words can be searched by using the wildcards "?"
or " * " in a search term. To wildcard only one character,
use "?" in the middle or at the end of a term. To wildcard
one or more characters, use " * " in the middle or at the end
of a term. You may combine wildcards within the same term.
Examples:
b?rd finds "bird" and "bard" but not "birds"
wom?n finds "woman" and "women"
dog*
finds "dog," "dogs," and "doggies"
d?g*
finds "dog," "dig," "dogs," "doggies," "digging," etc.
To search for an exact phrase, add quotes to your terms. Combine phrases and words as needed.
Example: chicago OR "new york"
When phrase searching, the order of terms matters. When constructing your search, keep in mind that some fields, such as creator names, are stored with the last name appearing first. So while a phrase search for " Abraham Ortelius" would retrieve no hits, a search for "Ortelius Abraham" will find images since this is how the term is stored in the creator field. To expand your results, always try keywords as an alternative to a phrase, since a keyword search will return results regardless of the order of the searched terms.
To increase relevant search results, several common words (stop-words), such as "a" and "by," are ignored when doing a search. For example, a search for "the City of New York" looks only for "city," "new," and "york."
NYPL Digital Gallery stop-words include these terms:
a, and, are, as, at, be, but, by, for, if, in, into, is, it, no, not, of,
on, or, such, that, the, their, then, there, these, they, this, to, was, will,
with
It is not necessary to capitalize proper names in search terms. Searches are not case-sensitive: a search for "new york city" or "New York City" will yield the same results.
Punctuation marks such as commas, periods, and dashes should not affect keyword searches. Diacritics count in searching and either need to be included in the search term or replaced with wildcards. For example, keying in "Seguy" does not retrieve the name spelled as "Séguy" and visa versa; however, typing in "S?guy" should retrieve instances of either spelling.
Use synonyms if a particular word search retrieves no hits, insert wildcards (* or ?, see above) for spelling uncertainties, or try browsing Subjects (see Browsing NYPL Digital Gallery).
Search results are ranked by relevancy according to the frequency in which terms appear in the following fields: Subjects, Captions, Names, Sources (Album/Book Title), Notes, and Call Numbers. Use Advanced Search to limit the incidence of search terms to specific fields.
Searches can sometimes retrieve a very large set of images. Enable more specific
results by limiting or refining a search to specific fields or numbers with
Advanced Search options. Advanced Searching also provides the Boolean options:
"AND," "OR," and "EXACT PHRASE."
Search here for album, book, or other source titles. Results are returned as a list of relevant collection and source
titles. Typing "american AND history,"
for example, will find the collection entitled, Emmet Collection of Manuscripts
Etc. Relating to American History, plus titles like Friends worth knowing;
glimpses of American natural history (1880) and American natural history.
Part 1.--Mastology. (1826-28)
Title searches may also be limited to specific date ranges. Keep in mind that this will limit your search to only those titles for which a published or created date is available. Not all titles contain date information, and these titles will not appear in your results.
A "number search" locates records using one of three different number types:
Terms are searched across all fields that have been selected in an Advanced Search. For example, an "ALL words [AND]" search using the terms "Abraham" and "Lincoln" will retrieve a record that has "Abraham" in any field (image caption, subject, title, etc.) and "Lincoln" in any field, for instance, one with "Abraham" in the title field and "Lincoln" in the subject field. To narrow searches to one or more fields, select preferred fields before searching. Truncate advanced search terms with wildcards ("*/?"); expand searches by choosing a Boolean ("AND," "OR," "EXACT PHRASE") option; or refine queries with the "limit by word(s)" option, which excludes records containing specific words or phrases in the fields that are searched.
Limit by Research Libraries' Centers or Divisions
Advanced searches may be limited to one or more of the NYPL Research Libraries'
Centers (Humanities and Social Sciences Library; The New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and
the Science, Industry and Business Library) or to divisions within these Centers.
A temporary list is stored of the search terms used during your browser session. Select "Search History" at the top of any page to review your previous searches. Closing your browser automatically deletes your list of searches. You must have cookies enabled on your client browser to use this feature. You may also delete your search history at any time during your session by choosing the "Clear your search history" link on the Search History page.
IN ORDER to help researchers explore this website and become familiar with its diverse content, collection guides provide additional organization and context while indexes allow linked access to related images.
Digital collections reside in one or more of seven broad topical classifications or categories. A linked menu of these categories appears in the navigation bar at the top of every page; an illustrated version for Flash-enabled computers opens on this website's home page. The categories are Arts & Literature, Cities & Buildings, Culture & Society, History & Geography, Industry & Technology, Nature & Science, and Printing & Graphics.
This website presents more than seventy digital collections of related materials in order to aid their discovery and to provide bibliographic, institutional, and intellectual context. Each of these presentations includes a structured narrative about the digital contents called a "Collection Guide." In addition, each digital collection provides tools for further browsing: "Collection Contents" is a list of titles or a hierarchy of folders and sub-folders enabling researchers to move through a collection's content and follow its internal organization; "Related Subjects" provides a scoped index, derived from the subject terms in the collections' descriptive records.
Digital collections all have the same presentation format, but represent two kinds of collections. One reflects real-world content and archival organization, such as researchers find when visiting a library reading room; the other type of collection is virtual, where NYPL has grouped together materials related by topic or format, that may reside in more than one library division. Many of the virtual collections build upon earlier work by NYPL staff such as bibliographies, monographs, and exhibitions featuring NYPL's special holdings. Citations for these earlier works appear in the "Related Resources" sections of relevant Collection Guides.
These browseable indexes present alphabetical lists organized by name, subject, or library curatorial unit.
Names listed include artists, authors, publishers, collectors, and others responsible for the creation of items found on this site. The name index includes primary (artist, photographer, etc.) and additional (printer, dedicatee, etc.) names.
NOTE: Check the subject index to find more names. For example, people depicted in images are listed in the subject index.
The subject index is an alphabetical list of subject terms which includes people, institutions, places, and topics derived from Library of Congress Subject Headings and the LC Thesaurus for Graphic Materials. Subjects are linked to related images; however, because descriptive records for some items do not have assigned subject terms, not all items in the Gallery can be accessed from this index.
The directory of library divisions organizes the titles found on this website by the curatorial and public service departments holding the original materials within the NYPL Research and Branch Libraries. In addition, the contents of each virtual collection (Collection Guide) can be sorted by the specific Library Division(s) providing the content.
