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Advanced Search Options

The Advanced Search page provides six ways to refine your search. You can use some or all of these options to make your search more specific.

Full Text field

To perform a keyword search, enter a single term or a phrase in quotation marks in the “Full Text” field.

Date field

By default, all available dates will be included in your search. However, you can limit your search to articles that were printed during a certain time frame, on a specific date, between two specific dates, or before or after a specific date by using the “Date” field. You may enter dates in a variety of formats.

Examples of single date range:

  • December 31, 1800
  • December 31 1800
  • Dec 31, 1800
  • Dec 31 1800
  • 12/31/1800
  • 1800/12/31
  • 12-31-1800
  • 1800/12/31

Examples of range of dates (inclusive):

  • January 1, 1800 through June 30, 1802
  • January 1 1800 through June 30 1802
  • 1/1/1800 through 6/30/1802
  • 1/1800 through 6/1802
  • January 1800 to June 1802
  • Jan 1 1800 to Jun 30 1802
  • 1800 to 1802
  • 1/1/1800 to 6/30/1802

Examples of before or after a specific date (inclusive):

  • before July 16, 1850
  • after April 24 1850
  • before 3/21/1850
  • after 1850/11/11
  • before Nov 1850
  • after October 1850
  • before 6/1850
  • after 1850

Note: The before and after a specific date limiters are inclusive. For example, if you search for articles containing the name Elizabeth that appeared “before 8/19/1850,” your results will include any articles that satisfy your search and appeared on or before August 19, 1850.

Keep in mind that the range of available newspapers changes whenever you include a date limiter as part of your search. The system will automatically limit the newspaper titles to those that have coverage during the time period that you have specified.

Publication, City or State field

The “Publication, City or State” field can limit your search to a particular newspaper title, or titles published in a specified area. For a full list of all available titles in our collection, click here. Note that as you begin filling in this field a window opens with choices that change in response to what you enter. Due to space limitations, this autofill feature presents ten choices – this does not mean that those are the only ten choices available, simply the ten best choices that match what you are entering.

Three Return options

You can change the order in which your results are sorted by selecting one of the three “Return” options. You can sort your results by: Best matches first, Chronological order, or Reverse chronological.

  • Best matches first -- the most relevant articles will appear at the top of the list. Relevancy is determined by a number of different factors including the total number of search terms that appear in the article, a statistical weighting of terms based on their frequency in the database as a whole, a proximity factor that evaluates where your search terms appear in relation to each other in the article, and the relative importance of different data fields in the newspaper archive.
  • Chronological order -- the oldest articles found will appear at the top of the list.
  • Reverse chronological -- the most recent articles found will appear at the top of the list.