Search tips

Top of page

Search

Enter a term in the search box.

For example:

Click on the "Search" button.

Top of page

Search "all words", "any word"

If the term contains more than one word, you must specify whether you want to find all the records that contain one or the other of the words by choosing the "Any word" radio button, or only the records that contain all the words by choosing the "All words" radio button.

Note: there is no way to search for an exact phrase such as "high chair".

For example:

Top of page

Advanced search

Advanced search allows you to combine multiple search criteria in the same search. Select the field or group of fields to search and enter the keyword or phrase you want to find. Add as many search lines as you need to refine your search using the "Add criteria line" button. To delete a criteria line, simply select the x under "Delete ".

For example:

Top of page

Field groupings

Fields are grouped into five question groups: what, where, who, when and how. Thus doing a search with "Ottawa" in "All fields for Where" is the equivalent of a search in the field "Institution" OR in the fields "Place of origin" OR in the fields "Place of use".

Some of these fields also include other fields; thus "Place of origin" includes Origin-Continent, Origin-Country, Origin-Province, Origin-District and Origin-Municipality. The tables below show the fields in each group under each question .

All fields for What

Filter Fields
Accession Number Accession Number
Object Name Object Name, Object Type and Alternate Object Name
Classification Classification, Group, Category and Sub-Category
Title Title
Description Description
History of Use History of Use
Subject/Image Subject/Image
Cultural Context Cultural Context

All fields for Where

Filter Fields
Institution Institution
Place of Origin Origin-Continent, Origin-Country, Origin-Province, Origin-District and Origin-Municipality
Place of Use Use-Continent, Use-Country, Use-Province, Use-Municipality and Institution Province

All fields for Who

Filter Fields
Artist/Maker Artist, Maker or Designer and Other Artist
Manufacturer Manufacturer
Merchant Merchant
Cultural Context Cultural Context
Provenance Provenance

All fields for When

Filter Fields
Production Date Begin Date and End Date
Period Period
School/Style School/Style

All fields for How

Filter Fields
School/Style School/Style
Technique Technique
Material Material
Medium Medium
Support Support

Top of page

Search by words with AND/OR/NOT or by exact phrase

Each field in the advanced search performs an exact phrase search by default. Thus, if you type in the field "All fields for What", the key phrase "high chair", you will retrieve 110 records that contain the exact phrase "high chair".

To find all records that contain the words "chair" and "high", add in the field "All fields for What", the keyword "chair", add a criteria line with the "AND" operator, the "All fields for What" field and the "high" keyword. This will retrieve 818 records containing both the word "chair" and the word "high".

To find all records that contain the word "chair" or the word "high", you must enter the field "All fields for What", the keyword "chair", add a criteria line with the "OR" operator, the "All fields for What" field and the "high" keyword. This will retrieve 34,577 records containing either the word "chair" or the word "high".

To find all records that contain the word "chair" and not the word "high", you must enter the field "All fields for What", the keyword "chair", add a criteria line with the "AND NOT" operator, the "All fields for What" field and the "high" keyword. This will retrieve 16,464 records containing the word "chair" without the word "high".

Top of page

Extended search with *

The search can also be done on the truncated root of a term followed or preceded by an asterisk (*).

For example:

Top of page

Search on the records of a regional network

To limit your searches to records contributed by members of a regional network, simply select the network name from the drop-down menu.

For example:

Top of page

Sort the results

You can sort the results by selecting the field on which to sort. Open the drop-down menu in the "Select a sort option" box, select a field and press the "Go" button. The records will be presented in the alphabetical order of the terms contained in this field. Records with no value for the chosen sort field are put at the end of the list.

Top of page

Display results

The search results will be displayed as a list by default. Using the two icons in the upper right-hand corner of the search results, you can choose between displaying the results as a list or a grid view. If you want to obtain only records which include images, click the box "Only records with images" in the search criteria area

Top of page

Search with accents and capital letters

Diacritic and uppercase characters are ignored by the search. Thus searching for "École", "école", "ecole" or "ECOLE" gives the same result.

Top of page

Using the back browser button

Using the browser back button is not recommended when searching the Artefacts Canada application. Due to the complexity of the search and the selection list, the use of session information to manage data and queries is necessary. This means that in certain circumstances, using the back button may cause an error message.

Top of page

Session activity

Your customized search data is stored in the session. You will be prompted to extend your session if it remains inactive for 60 minutes. For security reasons the system is not designed to save your information and you will lose all information previously entered, if you don't choose to extend your session when prompted.