Behind the Scenes: A New Way to Search

The Boyer Center Archives has a new-and-improved "look" for its online database.

The Boyer Center Archives has a new-and-improved “look” for its online catalog.

Editor’s Note: “Behind the Scenes” is a new, regular feature at the “Service Fulfilled” blog. It will offer periodic glimpses into the work of the Boyer Center Archives staff. In these posts, we’ll highlight new additions to the collection, current projects for archives staff, archival questions and conundrums we’re confronting, and other tidbits of interest to those who might use the collection. Stay tuned!

Many readers of Service Fulfilled have used the Boyer Center Archives’ online catalog (powered by PastPerfect Museum Software) to search for speeches, manuscripts, photographs, and other materials documenting the life and work of Ernest L. Boyer. If you have, you may have noticed that our catalog interface was a bit… well, let’s say “outdated.” Now, the Boyer Center Online has updated the look and feel of its catalog — and the result is a new and improved way to search our online holdings!

The new database functions quite similarly to the old catalog: researchers can still perform basic and advance searchers, and can scroll through “random images” from the collection. (Those with questions about using the online catalog should check out our Tips for Searching page at the Boyer Center Archives website.) But the new catalog has a few additional features, such as the ability to search only within the “archives” or “objects” record groups.

More than anything else, the catalog’s look and feel has been improved — resulting (we hope) in increased functionality, user friendliness, and aesthetic appeal.

Check out the new-and-improved catalog now!

Behind the Scenes: Tips for Searching

The new "Tips for Searching" section on the Ernest L. Boyer Center Archives website

The new “Tips for Searching” section on the Ernest L. Boyer Center Archives website

Editor’s Note: Do you know about our “Behind the Scenes” regular feature here at Service Fulfilled? It’s where we offer periodic glimpses into the work of the Boyer Center Archives staff. Check out the first entry here, and be sure to stay tuned for future installments! 

Here at the Boyer Center Archives, we’re always looking for ways to improve researcher experience. That’s especially true for those researchers who never make it to the physical archive: those researchers who use our online catalog!

To that end, we’ve created a new page at our Boyer Center Archives website — one entirely devoted to tips for searching the online catalog! Check out the page, which is now live.

And if you have tips for how we can improve the online searching experience, let us know!