How to search
How to search the site
There are two main ways you can find information on Pakiaka: by browsing or searching by keyword. On this page, we will cover both.
Browsing
If you prefer to browse, we advise you start your journey from our homepage, where you will find three browsing routes into our site:
- You can browse by format, using the blue buttons under the search box. If the format you are looking for is not shown here, simply click “show all”. You can then filter the results by item type.
- The tiles in our featured-content section offer another browsing option. These are like staff picks. Our latest blog post will always appear as the largest tile.
- Finally, you can browse by topic. The buttons in this section link to keywords assigned to items and stories on the site.
Searching
If you have a specific event, person, place or organisation you would like to research, we recommend using the search box on our homepage, or the advanced search that can be accessed via the left-hand panel.
Start your search by entering a keyword or phrase that is likely to give you results of interest. For example, if you are writing an article about Fairy Springs, type this place name into the box. For an article about all local springs, complete a broader search using only the word “springs” to ensure you catch information about every local spring.
In a list of search results, you will notice different types of result:
- Stories: these are articles written by staff on a range of topics.
- Items from our collections: these include albums, audio files, documents, ephemera, images, maps, publications and videos.
- If you see collections, series, sub-series or files, these are descriptions of multiple items.
If you complete a search for “Fairy Springs”, for example, you will notice a story with this phrase in the title. When you click on the story, it will open in a new tab. To go back to your list of search results, simply return to the first tab you had open.
When you click and open a publication, do not worry if your search term, like the phrase “Fairy Springs”, appears in red in the search box. This means the exact phrase does not appear in the text. Instead, part of the phrase does. When this happens, we advise searching for part of the phrase. For example, “Fairy” instead of “Fairy Springs”. This is likely to take you to the partial match.
To download content you find useful, simply click on the download icon to the left of the viewer. The box that pops up will give you two options: you can download the metadata about the image (that is the description of it), or the image itself. We advise downloading both, so you can easily refer to the item’s description later. For example, if you need to include information about it in a bibliography or references. The files will automatically download to the downloads folder on your computer.
To check you have not missed anything in the other search results, we advise going back and having a final scan. If you notice a link titled “Preview” below one of the thumbnails, you can click it to see a preview of terms that relate to your keyword search. This feature enables you to check whether the information in the document is relevant to your research, or not.
And that is all there is to it! If you have any further questions about searching, or anything else, do not hesitate to get in touch via the contact-us form.
