Footnote Search Tips

The basic search on Footnote returns results that include all your terms, though it will include some simple variations on words you include (e.g. president to presidents).

The first results will be cases where the terms you entered appear in the same field, for example a first and last name together in one annotation. After that you'll see results that include results from anywhere on the page.

If you don't get any results, try broadening your search by removing some of the terms or trying spelling variations.

Matching terms may come from information we have indexed for the image or from annotations added by other Members.

• AND: Use "and" to indicate words that must be in the result, but not in a particular order. Since the search now uses "and" by default, you don't need to include "and" unless you are creating a more complex search.
  Example: John and Adams
  Example: murder revolver
• NOT: Add "not" before terms you want to exclude.
  Example: john and adams not quincy
  
• OR: Use "or" to broaden your search or include alternate terms.
  Example: Sorensen or Sorenson
• Parentheses: Use parentheses to group words and commands.
  Example: (Gen or General) and Washington
  
• Quotation Marks: Use quotes around exact phrases you want to search for.
  Example: "defend the constitution"
  Tip: Don't use quotes around first and last name (names are often in different fields of the index).
• Wild Cards: Use an asterisk (*) to search for variations of a word or misspellings where the asterisk replaces an unknown number of letters or no letters.
  Example: Anders*n=Anderson, Andersen, Andersson, etc.

1. On the Original Documents page or on the search results page you will find a blue search box that includes a pull-down menu for selecting the title you would like to search within.
2. On the Browse screen, browse to the title (or subsection of a title) you're interested in and then use the brown "Search within" box at the bottom of the page to search.