Welcome to the Help System for the Ethnic and Special Audience Newspaper Project’s Database. For detailed help, click on a link below:
Keyword| Title | Publication City
Publication State | Genre | Language
Bibliography | Date | Date Started/Ended
General Help: You may either type in query criteria into the search form, or use the browse feature. The browse feature is available by clicking on the Label of each field. For example, to browse by Title, click on the word “Title”. A new window will appear, from which you may click on the item you wish to paste into the search field. If you click the browse feature again, the previous item pasted will be replaced. Use the Boolean commands to the left of each term to narrow down or expand your searches. For example, to find papers from Oregon not published in Portland, you would set the AND box in front of the Publication City field to NOT and type in “Portland”. To find papers from Washington OR from Portland, set the box to OR. Boxes are evaluated top to bottom.
Typing a phrase of two or more words will find all those words in that order. To perform more specific searches within a single field (such as finding papers from Seattle OR Portland) you can use inline Boolean operators:
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Typing this: |
Will Find this: |
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Alaska Indian |
The phrase “Alaska Indian” |
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Alaska / Indian |
Any items with either “Alaska” OR “Indian” |
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Alaska & Indian |
Any items with both “Alaska” AND “Indian” in any order |
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Al* |
Any items which begin with Al (Alaska, Alaskan, Aleutian) |
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Alaska:Indian |
Any items with words that are alphabetically in-between Alaska and Indian |
Date searches can be entered in many possible ways, including “August, 1977”, “Aug 1977”, “8-1977”, etc., but for best results, use the format MM-DD-YYYY. You should not use the slash (8/25/1977), unless it is contained in quotation marks (“8/25/1977”). This will result in a Boolean OR search.
To search a range, use the ( : ) operator. For example, to search for papers that started or ceased publication between 1977 and 1981, type “1977:1981” (without quotes) into the Date Started/Ended field. To search an open-ended range, use the “>” and “<” symbols, e.g. “>1977”. NOTE: You cannot use Boolean operators in the Date Range field.
For more specific help about each field, use the links at the top, scroll down, or click on the “?” at the end of each field on the Search Page. For a more general guide to searches, click on the red “?” icon after the Clear button.
KEYWORD: The Keyword field will search all of the terms in the Title, Publication City, Publication State, Genre, Language, Summary, Bibliography, and Date fields. It will not accept any combinations thereof, such as “African American Newspapers English Oregon”, but it is the quickest way to find a single term in any of the fields – Searching for “Portland” will give you results that contain Portland in the Title (Portland Observer) and also the Publication City. See the top of this page for help on Boolean searches and syntax.
TITLE: The Title field is where you would search for words appearing in the Title of the paper. Leading articles such as “The” aren’t necessary; for example, The Seattle Times could be found simply by typing “Seattle Times”. You may search for newspapers which have two titles by searching for words appearing in either title. For example, the North American Post is also listed under its romanized Japanese name – the Hokubei Hochi. Searching for either title will show the record. See the top of this page for help on Boolean searches and syntax.
PUBLICATION CITY: The Publication City field contains the city or cities where the newspaper was published. In most cases, there will be a single city for a paper, but occasionally, a paper will move to another city. The title should be found by both cities in that instance. Cities with two words in the title, such as New Westminster, British Colombia, can be found by either word or both. See the top of this page for help on Boolean searches and syntax.
PUBLICATION STATE: On the Basic Search Page, the states (or provinces) which are contained in the database are in a drop-down menu for convenience. On the Advanced Search page, states can be typed in, in the event that an anomaly occurs, such as a paper publishing first in California and then moving to Oregon. The seven “Pacific Northwest” states and provinces are: Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Yukon Territory, British Colombia and Alaska. See the top of this page for help on Boolean searches and syntax.
GENRE: On the Basic Search Page, the most common Genres are provided in a drop-down box for convenience. However, on the Advanced Search Page, there is a text-field in which to type in search terms. Papers may have multiple Genres, such as being a ”Filipino Newspaper” and also a “Labor Newspaper”. See the Newspaper Genre List for a listing of appropriate Genre forms. See the top of this page for help on Boolean searches and syntax.
LANGUAGE: Search by what language a paper is written in. Many ethnic papers are printed in two or more languages, such as English and Spanish, so searching for either will return that paper. The Language in which the majority of the paper appears is listed first. Though commonly the same articles appear in both languages in a paper, it is not uncommon to find an article appear only in English, or only in Spanish. See the top of this page for help on Boolean searches and syntax.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: The Bibliography is a field which will search the documents used to locate and discover newspapers.It can be useful for finding similar items of interest that will not appear in the database, due to Place of Publication or focus. For example, if a paper appears in the book “African American Press 1900-1920”, that book will appear in the Bibliography field, but not all the newspapers in the book will be available in the database. Newspapers will frequently have multiple bibliographic entries. A full listing of the Bibliography used is available here. See the top of this page for help on Boolean searches and syntax.
DATE: Use this field to find papers that were published on a certain date (keep in mind that the paper itself might not have published on a specific date; use this search to find papers that were in publication at that time). The format for dates is MM-DD-YYYY. You may also use only a year, or a month and a year, if you prefer, using the MM-YYYY format. Searching for multiple dates in this field will not work, and neither will Boolean operations. For Date Range Searches, see below.
DATE STARTED/ENDED: This field will search the date a paper began publication or ceased publication for whatever reason. Specific dates should be in MM-DD-YYYY or MM-YYYY format. This field will allow Boolean operations, including the BETWEEN (:) operator. See the top of this page for help on Boolean searches and syntax.