Thanks to everyone who attended today’s XTF training! I’m posting some of the tips and tricks I shared today, as well as a link to our development server below:
You can search across the RAC’s archival materials, books, DVDs, VHS and microfilm holdings from the home page or the Advanced Search page.
You can search within an archival collection by selecting that collection and then using the “search within this collection” in the navigation bar.
An asterisk - * - will find from one to many characters within a word:
- hist* will retrieve history, histories, and historians
- coo*tion will find cooperation and coordination
A question mark - ? - will find only one character within a word:
- america? will retrieve american and americas
- wom?n will retrieve woman, women, and womyn
To search for an exact string, place quotation marks around the string:
- “south africa” will find south africa, but not south african
Search queries are not case sensitive. Except for the above examples, punctuation is ignored.
Refining your search
On every search results screen you will see a box titled “Refine Search.” It contains categories called facets, and you can discover relevant resources by browsing the contents of the facets. By selecting one or more facets you can further narrow your initial search. In order to remove a facet and expand your search click on the [x] next to the search term in the navigation bar. When you see a facet under “Refine Search” that is of interest to you, you can also dig in deeper by clicking the “more” link to see additional terms.
Get notified when we update the site
When you see this icon 
it means there is an RSS feed for this search. You can click on it to subscribe to see the most recent changes and additions in that search in your favorite feed reader.
Development server
We have a development server, where we test upcoming functionality and bug fixes. It is accessible only from the RAC network (you can access it from home on VPN). Please keep in mind that this server may not always be up, and you may often see functionality that looks odd or broken, and finding aids that are out of date. However, feel free to poke around on this site if you want to get a preview of what’s coming!