Quick search
On this site, the quick search is searching across the title and description fields. Where more than one term is entered, the default is an AND search.

Advanced search
By default the search will look for the word or words you have entered. You can however choose to change the default search criteria by clicking Refine Search Criteria. There are three ways of refining the search option:

• With all the words

• With at least one of the words

• Without the words

The field may also link to a separate authority file e.g. Terms. To search in this field, you can either:

• type a word into the Term search field and click Search

• type a word into the Term search field and click the [Terms] button to the right of the field.

If the term you have entered exists in the authority file the term will be displayed along with any broader, narrower, related terms. It is then possible to browse across other terms. When you click Select, the term currently selected will copy across to the Advanced Search screen. If the term you have entered does not exist in the authority file you will have the option to either go back to the Advanced Search screen or browse all the top level terms.

Bookmarks
When you view a full record you will see options to Add, View or Delete Bookmarks.

The bookmark allows you to bookmark or flag a record for viewing later in the same search session.

To bookmark a record, simply click Add Bookmark. If the record already has a bookmark then Delete Bookmark will display instead.

Clicking View Bookmark at any time will list in full record view all records currently bookmarked. This allows the user to review a specific list of records or to print them off.

Any text

Use this field to search across all the text fields in the entire database. You can enter any word or phrase here just as you would in a web search engine like Google. For example, to find out if we have the records of a particular Westminster parish or business, enter the name here and click on the Search button at the bottom of the screen

Title

Use this field to search across the entries in the title field of all of our records. This should give you rather more specific results than those you would get using the "any text" search

Management Group

This allows you to limit your search by selecting one of three options. Archives – Official Records (Westminster City Council and its predecessors Archives – Deposited Records (records from all other sources) Local Studies – mainly prints and photographs and some printed material

Management Sub-Group

Our collections are grouped together by type according to the individual, or organisation which created them. Use this field to browse our collections and identify our holdings in different areas, for example, if you are interested in records of Westminster schools, you can scroll down this list and select ‘Schools and other educational institutions’, and then click on Search. This will return a hitlist showing all the records that we have received from schools in this area.

Category

This is a tool to help you to browse our collections to see if we have a particular type of material. For example, if you want to see information about the collections of wills and probate records which we hold, select “Wills and probate documents” from this list and click on Search

Prints and Photographs

If you only want to search for images select 'Prints and Photographs' from the Category field and click on Search.