1. Can I currently search and view ALL testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive?
2. What is a segment?
3. Why do some segments have keywords and other segments have none?
4. Does the USC Shoah Foundation Institute continue to make changes to the Visual History Archive search interface?
5. Does the Visual History Archive allow Boolean searches?
6. I can't see everything on the screen. What's wrong?
7. Why do I see strange characters on some pages of the VHA?
8. Why do I see the characters `and ´ in personal names?
9. I am getting too many results. How can I narrow them?
10. I cannot find a specific person I thought was born in a certain country. Why is this?
11. Can I search for a person if I don't know exactly how to spell his or her name?
12. How can I search for a city name if I don't know how it was spelled during the prewar era?
13. What does it mean if the camp name I find has (u) in front of it?
14. What does it mean if the camp name I find has (generic) after it?
15. What does it mean when a gray box that says "data only" appears next to the interviewee's name?
16. What does it mean when the status of a video shows "Viewable w/i 48 Hrs?"
17. What does it mean when the status of a video shows "Not Yet Viewable?"
18. How does Projects help me organize my searches?
19. How do I obtain copies of whole testimonies or portions of testimonies?
20. The video image is stretched. How do I fix this?

1. Can I currently search and view ALL testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive?
   
   Searching testimonies: The Visual History Archive currently holds basic biographical data for nearly 98% of the testimonies. In addition, users can search segments of testimonies using indexing terms for nearly 95% of the archive. Viewing testimonies: Currently, nearly 99% of the testimonies have been digitized.
2. What is a segment?
   
   A segment is a one-minute unit of a testimony in the VHA. Testimonies are divided into one-minute segments which can be retrieved by the end user through keyword searches. Not every segment has keywords attached. Please note: Approximately 4,900 testimonies within this collection were indexed using segments that are longer than one minute. For these testimonies, the actual segment length can range from one minute to nine minutes.
3. Why do some segments have keywords and other segments have none?
   
   Keywords are attached to one-minute segments when a topic is discussed or described in some detail. If the discussion or description spans several segments, the relevant keywords are usually applied once. Keywords may appear at the beginning of the discussion, in the middle of the discussion, or towards the end of a discussion. New keywords appear when the topic of conversation changes. Please note: Approximately 4,900 testimonies within this collection were indexed using larger segments than one minute. For these testimonies, the actual segment length can range from one minute to nine minutes. Each segment in these testimonies usually has multiple keywords.
4. Does the USC Shoah Foundation Institute continue to make changes to the Visual History Archive search interface?
   
   Yes, the Visual History Archive search interface is being updated continuously. New features are added and modifications are being made based on user responses. If you have any suggestions and/or comments, please fill out the Feedback survey or you can email them to: vhi-acc@usc.edu. Your feedback is very much appreciated.
5. Does the Visual History Archive allow Boolean searches?
   
   AND searches and OR searches are possible in the Quick Search, Biographical Search by Experience Group and Global Keyword Search.
   
   Quick Search: You can choose to perform an AND or OR search between multiple terms that you enter by selecting the radio button labeled with all of the words or with at least one of the words respectively.
   
   Biographical Search by Experience Group: You can choose between an AND and an OR search using the pull-down menu in the left frame when searching on more than one question. The left frame will display the # of results for each question individually as well as the result of your combined search.
   
   Global Keyword Search: You can choose between an AND and an OR search using the radio buttons between the Keyword Choices and Selected Keywords boxes.
   
   OR search: The OR search retrieves segments that include at least one of your Selected Keywords.
   
   AND search: The AND search retrieves segments that include all of your Selected Keywords (up to 35 keywords).
   
   Segment range: The AND search also permits you to chose a Segment Range. It is possible to search for all Selected Keywords appearing in the same segment (i.e. 1 segment), within 5 (consecutive) segments, within 10 (consecutive) segments, within 15 (consecutive) segments or within the Entire testimony. The Search Results list will display segments in which one of your Selected Keywords appeared first. Once you go to the Testimony Viewing Screen you will be able to access and view all segments for that testimony.
   
   NOT search: The Visual History Archive does not accommodate a NOT search at the present time.
6. I can't see everything on the screen. What's wrong?
   
   The Visual History Archive is designed to fill the entire web-browser window. Press F11 to maximize the screen.
7. Why do I see strange characters on some pages of the VHA?
   
   The Visual History Archive was updated to display certain diacritical modifiers used to transliterate Hebrew and/or Russian keywords and names of people. To display these diacritics properly in Internet Explorer, you will need to change the default encoding settings. Go the View menu, highlight Encoding, and then select Unicode (UTF-8) option and make sure that the Auto-Select option is deselected. You may have to repeat this procedure more than once before your browser sticks with this setting. Please be aware that you may still encounter some display errors while we are working through all the issues.
8. Why do I see the characters ` and ´ in personal names?
   
   ´ is the transliterated character of the Hebrew character "alif". ` is the transliterated character of the Hebrew character "ayn".
9. I am getting too many results. How can I narrow them?
   
   In some cases you will retrieve more testimonies or segments than you can manage. You can narrow your search by limiting your results to a single language and/or gender. Another option is to save your search results to Projects. Once you have saved your search results as a Project, you will have the option to click on search within projects. You can use any of the four search options: Quick Search, People Search, Biographical Search and/or Global Keywords Search when searching on testimonies saved in your Projects. Note: If a project was created from segment results obtained using a Global Keyword Search, currently you cannot search within this project using a Quick Search, People Search, or Biographical Search. This functionality will be enabled in the VHA soon.
10. I cannot find a specific person I thought was born in a certain country. Why is this?
    
    In order to maintain consistency, the Shoah Foundation uses cataloguing guidelines based on time periods. Some countries' borders and names changed after World War I and again after World War II. To keep the information in the archive historically accurate, the date of birth determines the country name catalogued for the country of birth. Example: If a survivor states that he was born in Vienna in 1909, the country of birth is indexed as Austria-Hungary. Austria came into existence only after World War I.
11. Can I search for a person if I don't know exactly how to spell his or her name?
    
    The Visual History Archive does not employ soundex, so when searching for a person, you may need to try several different spellings of the name. You can also try a portion of the name, such as "Got" for "Gotfryd" or "Gottfried." In these cases, you will have better luck using starts with or contains as your search options.
12. How can I search for a city name if I don't know how it was spelled during the prewar era?
    
    City names and other geographic locations, including ghettos, camps, administrative units (such as states or provinces), countries, etc., may be searched in the Global Keywords Search using preferred terms or variant spellings. For example, today the prewar city Lwow is known as Lviv. Either spelling may be used to find the city name for your search, as well as several other variants. The Visual History Archive does not employ soundex, so you may need to try several different spellings to find the appropriate term.
13. What does it mean if the camp name I find has (u) in front of it?
    
    (u) means that the geographic location and/or resistance group could not be verified by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute's research staff using the sources at hand.
14. What does it mean if the camp name I find has (generic) after it?
    
    (generic) indicates that more than one known location with the same name exists. When the indexer or researcher was unable to verify the specific location referenced in the testimony, a generic term was used, i.e, Jaworzno (Poland) (generic).
15. What does it mean when a gray box that says "data only" appears next to the interviewee's name?
    
    "Data only" simply means that an image of the interviewee has not been successfully captured from the digitized video testimony yet.
16. What does it mean when the status of a video shows "Viewable w/i 48 Hrs?"
    
    The status Viewable w/i 48 Hrs means that the testimony has been digitized but is not loaded on your local cache/video server. This means the testimony needs to load from the Institute’s central video storage location to your local cache/video server. This may take up to 48 hours, depending on network traffic.
17. What does it mean when the status of a video shows "Not Yet Viewable?"
    
    The status Not Yet Viewable means that the testimony has not yet been digitized and therefore cannot currently be viewed using the Visual History Archive; however, the testimony may have already been catalogued and/or indexed, so cataloguing and/or indexing data may be available.
18. How does Projects help me organize my searches?
    
    The feature Projects allows you to save a group of testimonies or segments and add notes describing that sub-set of the archives. Once you have identified the sub-sets of interest to you, you can return to those Projects at any time to view the testimonies or run additional searches on the testimonies or segments that have been saved. Once you are finished with a sub-set of testimonies or segments, you can delete the project. When you save testimonies or segments to an existing project, they are appended to the existing file, they do not replace it.
19. How do I obtain copies of whole testimonies or portions of testimonies?
    
    The USC Shoah Foundation Institute makes (or authorizes others to make) copies of whole testimonies or portions of testimonies in certain instances: for interviewees and their family members, for institutions acquiring collections, for documentaries and exhibits, for secondary school teachers, and for students and educators at universities that have access to the digital Visual History Archive (VHA). If you are a student or instructor at Columbia University, please consult the librarian contact at vha@libraries.cul.columbia.edu your local reference staff for assistance. If you are not affiliated with Columbia University, please contact Shoah Foundation Institute staff by email at vhi-acc@usc.edu or by phone at (213) 740-6001.
20. The video image is stretched. How do I fix this?
    
    A setting in Windows Media Player in Internet Explorer causes the videos to look stretched. To fix the setting 1) Right-click the video player on the Viewing Screen, and choose Options. 2) Under the Performance tab of the Options menu window that appears, click Advanced. 3) Under the Video Acceleration section of the Video Acceleration Settings window that appears, uncheck the setting for Use video mixing renderer and click OK. 4) Click Apply on the Options menu window, and finally click OK to close the Options window. The video should now display normally.

FAQ provided by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute. See the Help menu of the Visual History Archive for more information.