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What can I find? scroll to top
The cross-media catalogue search aggregates data from library catalogues, museums and archives, art history bibliographies and open access repositories, databases, e-journals and internet sources as well as image databases.
A current overview of all data sources can be found here.
How are search terms interpreted? scroll to top
When entering search terms in the free text search (search slot), the terms are interpreted using a stemming process, i.e. different morphological variants of a word are traced back to their common word stem, e.g. the declension of cities or cities to city. No distinction is made between upper and lower case.
The search is carried out across all data fields. For example, the term "warburg" finds writings by Aby Warburg, as well as architectural and artistic monuments in the Warburg district.
Hits that contain Warburg as the author's name are weighted higher.
By entering several search terms, you can modify or limit the search results, e.g. aby warburg or warburg art monuments.
Search terms can also be specifically excluded by placing a minus sign in front of them, e.g. warburg -aby -kunstdenkmäler.
To narrow down your search further, you can also restrict the results using the filter facets in the margin (see below).
Can I use placeholders? scroll to top
You can use the placeholder * to truncate search terms on the left or right:
*museum finds e.g. museum, diocesan museum, national museum, city museum etc.
wolf* finds Wolfen, Wolfenbüttel, Wolfgang, Wolfsburg etc.
Can I search for groups of words? scroll to top
You can search for groups of words by using inverted commas:
‘rotes haus’, for example, finds data records that contain the word sequence “rotes haus”, and due to the stemming mechanisms also data records with, for example, the word sequence “rote häuser” or “roten hauses”.
How can I narrow down search results further? scroll to top
Search results can be narrowed down by entering additional search terms (see above) and by using the filter facets on the right-hand side.
Depending on the search result, the following categories are available, sorted by frequency:
Access (Zugang) (physical nature of the medium)
Media type (Medientyp) (books, articles, journals, images, etc.)
Year of publication (Erscheinungsjahr) (Please note that retro-digitised editions of originally analogue objects are listed in some data sources under the creation date of the digital edition).
Author (Urheber) (persons and institutions)
Origin (Herkunft) (libraries and collections)
Subject (Thema) (keywords, classification)
Subject area (Fachgebiet) (evaluation of library classification systems such as RVK notation or the DDC)
Language (Sprache)
For all facets, in particular for subjects and subject areas, the completeness of the content depends on whether corresponding information can be found in the respective source data and whether or to what extent this has been standardised there.
Using the X symbol behind the respective terms, you can use the filter facets to specifically exclude certain content from your search, e.g. texts in certain languages using the language (Sprache) facet, or searching full-text sources using the Origin (Herkunft) facet.
You can use the Keep filter selection box (Filter beibehalten) to apply filters once they have been set for all subsequent searches, for example because you only want to search for a specific media type (Medientyp) like article (Artikel) or image material (Bildmaterial).
How are search results sorted? scroll to top
The default sorting of search results is based on their formal relevance. Alternatively, an alphabetical sorting by title or by new or older hits can be set.
The basis for the so-called relevance ranking is the evaluation of search terms: Hits in author details or titles, for example, are weighted higher than matches in digitised full texts; persons and bodies involved are weighted higher than hits in tables of contents.
The physical characteristics of media (e.g. analogue/digital) or user behaviour (‘title popularity’) are not evaluated.
Advanced Search scroll to top
The Advanced Search option allows you to formulate search queries more precisely than using the general search slot by searching only in certain indices.
These indices (e.g. author (Autor), title (Titel), keyword (Schlagwort), publisher/place (Verlag/ort)) can be combined with each other.
A search query for Erwin Panofsky in 'author' ('Autor'), for example, only returns publications in which Erwin Panofsky is listed as an author.
A search query for Panofsky Vöge in 'author’ ('Autor') lists all titles in which both are listed as authors, Panofsky -Vöge leads to all publications by Panofsky in which Wilhelm Vöge was not involved.
You can also use the slider to narrow down the year of publication and select the desired media type before starting your search. The filter facets can also be used to limit the search results in the advanced search as described above.