North Shore City Libraries
	Waitakere Library & Information Services
	Rodney Libraries

Site navigation

From the main home page you can search or browse the entire database. If you want to limit your search or browsing to a particular library or particular collection (for example, images or newspapers) you can do this by clicking on one of the Search Libraries or Search Collections links.

To navigate back, there are several options:

• Click on the Home or Collections links at the top left of any screen to go back to the main home page or to the home page for that collection
  
  
• Use your internet browser’s Back arrow to return to the previous page you were on
  
  
• Click anywhere on the title banner at the top of any screen to return to the home page for that collection
  
  

Searching and Browsing

Searching and Browsing

• search for particular words or phrases
• browse images and/or index records by place
• browse images and/or index records by subject
• browse images and/or index records by date

You can search for particular words or phrases that appear in the text by entering your search terms in the Search for box that appears on every screen. If you want to refine your search further, you can also click on Advanced Search

You can browse by place by clicking the Browse place link. This brings up a list of images and/or records in alphabetic order.

You can browse by subject by clicking the Browse subjects link. This brings up a list of images and/or records based around a common theme such as schools, roads or geographical features.

You can browse images by date by clicking the Browse dates link. This brings up a list of images and/or records grouped by year.

Search Hints

Keyword searching is often the most effective way to look for what you want. Search terms can be entered as individual words, or you can narrow your search by looking for a specific phrase or group of words and/or numbers. You can also widen the search by using wildcard and truncation symbols to replace individual letters or groups of letters within or at the end of words.

• Phrase searching – use quotes around the phrase. (“Auckland Harbour Bridge”)
• Wildcard – use ? to replace a single letter. (election? retrieves election and elections)
• Truncation – use * to replace a group of letters at the end of a word. (music* retrieves music, musical, musician, and musicians)

This is a keyword search on the subject headings assigned to each record. Enter your key words to bring up a list of records with that term in the subject heading.

Searches each record by the name of the author, photographer or organisation responsible for creating the original photo, article, oral history or archive.

This is a keyword search on the description of each record. Enter your key words to bring up a list of records with that term in the description field.

Searches each record by the date the original item was published, photographed etc.

If you are looking for newspaper articles written on a specific date, you can do this as a date search, but you can also do it as a keyword search by treating the date as a phrase, and entering it in this format - “DD Month YYYY” e.g. “11 July 1998”.

This is a keyword search on the title of each record. Enter your key words to bring up a list of records with that term in the title field.