General Search

Finding aids describing Columbia's archival collections can be searched and accessed at https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu.

Searching on multiple keyword terms will return results matching any of the terms, with match relevance increased when more terms match, and increased again when the terms match in a phrase (ie, in order).

Quoting a phrase will search on an exact match.

Terms can be negated by prefixing them with an exclamation point.

Grouping Search Results

By default, the invidually matched resource descriptions in search results will be grouped by collection. This can be disable by clicking on the "All Results" toggle on the search result screen.

Sorting Search Results

Sorting search results when grouped by collection works slightly differently than sorting all individual results:

• When sorting by relevance, the most relevant result within a collection determines its position in the result set
• When sorting by title, the collection title is sorted before the individual result title