Beaton Institute : Basic Searching vs Advance Searching

Basic Searching is perfect if you want to start researching with a broad scope. It will provide many different types of results including various media types, levels of description, etc. To begin your search enter one keyword or multiple keywords into the search engine located at the top right corner. Remember:

• Basic searching will support the use of Boolean operators such as AND, OR, or NOT, which must be entered in uppercase (e.g.  Mi'kmaq OR Mi'kmaw AND music). 

When searching for materials using basic searching on newspaper AND Sydney, the Digital Archive provided 109 results. 

Advance Searching allows for a detailed search strategy for people who are looking for more specific primary sources. A few Advanced Search areas that can be searched include:

• Level of Description (e.g. item, file, fonds, series, collection, etc.)
• Digital Object Availability 
• General Material Designation (e.g. graphic material, moving images, sound recording, textual record, etc.)
• Date Range
• Additional Boolean Operators

When using advance searching to specify the Level of Description, Date Range, Digital Object Availability, and Additional Boolean operators for newspaper AND Sydney NOT military, the Digital Archive narrowed down the results to 42, making the search more focused.