The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Cross Collection Search Survival Skills

The Cross Collection Search Page is a search and discovery tool that reveals digitized images, sound recordings, and video clips that are part of the collections of material at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

 

The Cross Collection Search Page is the starting point for any search. Two important characteristics of this page are:

  1. You can include/exclude specific collections for your search
  2. You can search three different ways :  Word search , Phrase search , Image ID search.

 

Collections are included/excluded by simply checking/un-checking a checkbox next to the collection name. (In addition to launching searches against multiple collections from this page, you have the ability of going directly to the search page of any of the individual collections that are represented on this page. This is accomplished by clicking the arrow icon next to the collection name.)

 

There are currently three different types of searches that can be performed from this page.

  1. Word search: Enter one or more keywords, each separated by a space. Click ANY to make this an “OR” search; click ALL to make this an “AND” search. Note that articles and prepositions are ignored here, and recognized only when imbedded within a phrase search.
  2. Phrase search: Enter any phrase. Note that this search looks for an exact match on the phrase that you enter.
  3. Image ID search: Use this search to retrieve a single item if you already know the Image ID.

 

The Cross Collection Search Results Page is returned if your search found any matches. There can be one or more of these pages. Each page will contain up to 20 images. A search that returned 100 images will have 5 pages of results. Each image, as well as the page itself, offers the opportunity to perform several actions.

 

Each image on this page can be:

  1. Saved: The word “Save” appears above each image. Clicking “Save” will add this image to your “Group”. The Group will persist for as long as you have your browser open. Entire groups can later be saved or ordered. Note that cookies need to be enabled for this feature to work. 
  2. Enlarged: Under each image you will two buttons for enlarging the image, a 4x size and an 8x size.
  3. Zoomed: Many images will also have a Zoom button which will attempt to open a wavelet compressed image. This image allows for a high degree of “drill-down” into the image detail. Note that it requires the use of a browser plug-in program available for download from www.lizardtech.com.
  4. Expanded: Clicking on an image will launch a new browser window containing descriptive detail and an enlarged view of the image. Two actions can be taken from this page:
    1. Click the image to see an even larger view.
    2. Generate a “Reference Print” page. Similar to the current page but with a smaller view of the image.

 

A Page Navigation tool is located at the top and bottom of the Cross Collection Search Results Page. This tool simply allows you to page backward or forward by a single page, or jump to a specific page number.

 

There are two buttons at the top of Cross Collection Search Results Page:

  1. New Search:  and clicking it will take you back to the Cross Collection Search Page to begin a new search.
  2. My Group: clicking this button will open up your Image Group page. You will not have an image group unless you clicked “Save” on at least one image.

 

The Image Group page displays all the images that you previously selected (by clicking “Save” over an image).

 

You can remove any image from your group by clicking the word “Remove” under an image.

 

You can initiate two actions with your group:

  1. Create a web page that displays the group. You do this by clicking the “MakePage” button. You will see that the page that is generated looks very similar to the Cross Collection Search Results Page except that there is no “Save” option over the images.
  2. Order prints, slides or TIFFs (on CD) of the images in your group. You do this by clicking the “Order” button. This takes you to the Order Summary page.