Exploring vast amounts of historical documentation, such as the millions of primary sources hosted on our innovative digital archive, is always fascinating—you never know what you might learn! Sometimes, however, it is preferable or necessary to conduct focused, targeted research, and a helping hand can make this process more enjoyable and productive.
At BOA, we strive to make our primary sources as discoverable and easy to explore as possible, which is why our skilled editorial team put so much care, thought, and time in to ensuring that our collections are tagged so comprehensively!
It is therefore quick and easy to filter thousands of historical documents and to hone in on specific periods and topics!
Our Tags and Search Filters—How to Use Them
Our editorial team develop tags based on the archival material that they are working with, so tags can vary from collection to collection—tags for a periodical, such as The Tatler, might differ from those designed for, say, a collection that is composed mostly of government documents, such as Censorship: Policy and Practice during the Second World War.
That said, we employ a range of standard tags across all of our collections, namely “Archive”, “Country”, “Date Range”, “Material Type”, “Reference”, “Region”, “Script”, “Sub Theme”, and “Time Period”.
These tags underpin our website’s excellent search function. This is present on any of our collection landing pages—simply click on the “Search” tab. The following examples spotlight one of our primary source collections: Pandemics, Society, and Public Health, 1517–1925.
On the “Search” page you will find the tags for that specific collection on the left hand side:
So in this instance, users can filter through documents related to the four infectious diseases that the collection focuses upon:
Users can likewise filter through time period and year:
You can also search for a specific archive reference and find documents sourced from a specific institution, such as the British Library:
Further Uses of Our Search Filters
Need to find a poster or, perhaps, a pamphlet? The “Material Type” filter is your friend!
Stuck on what you are looking for, or want to have a slightly more focused browse of our collections? Our “Sub Theme” filter can help you hone in on key topics.
Let’s look at a further example of our website’s search function. This time we are exploring our fascinating primary source collection, The Graphic, 1869–1932. This contains the extensive back catalogue of this illustrated periodical, totalling over 90,000 images!
If you are interested in reading about a specific event that was reported upon in, say, March 1888, you can use the “Month” and “Date Range” filters to locate a relevant issue of The Graphic.
Furthermore, did you know that our primary source collections benefit from textract software? This means that the text in our documents is fully searchable! You can conduct keyword searches via the search bar on the “Search” tab.
For example, if you were to search for “Atomic” in our recent collection release, Britain Under Threat: Civil Defence in the Era of Total War, 1914–1989, the search will flag documents where that term occurs. It will also highlight how many times a keyword recurs in a document.
We also tag notable individuals. You can therefore conduct searches using names. In this example, we have searched for “Agatha Christie” in our primary source collection, The Sketch, 1893–1958. This contains over 170,000 images of this periodical, so the ability to search by name, as well as by keyword, is really helpful!
