Welcome to Archives at Southern
This database will search for archival material in the Buley Library Special Collections & Archives. Materials in the database include unpublished manuscripts, university records, visual materials such as films and photographs, audio recordings, digital material, and much more.
Please note that not all of our collections have been processed and we will be continually adding content.
How to search for materials.
- Begin a basic search by entering your search terms in the search bar. You may limit the search by searchable fields, record type, and date.
- The searchable fields are: Keyword, Title, Creator, Subject, and Collection Number.
- Record types allow you to customize the type of records you want a search to return:
- Limiting to collections will only return records for collections, rather than people, subjects, series, and files.
- You may select a date span to limit the search results chronologically.Searching by date is approximate, and results may fall outside the date span you enter.
- You may construct a more complex search by selecting the + icon and adding additional search parameters.
Phrasing your searches
- Searches are not case sensitive.
- You may search for phrases by including quotation marks (e.g. “Collins family”)
- By default, searches with three or fewer search terms return results containing all of the search terms. Searches with four or more search terms return results containing most of the search terms. You may add OR and NOT to change this behavior (e.g. DeStefano OR Harp or politics NOT law.
- You may add a tilde (~) to search for search terms within a specified number of words of one another (e.g. “maps Connecticut”~5 will return results where the term maps occurs within 5 words of the term Connecticut.).
- “Wildcard” symbols ? and * help return a greater number of relevant results by searching for variant spellings and forms of search terms simultaneously.
Contact Information
Please visit the Special Collections & Archives page for general information. To contact staff please email us at specialcollections@southernct.edu.
Glossary of Terms and Symbols
Collections are groups of materials assembled by a person, family, organization, or repository. They can be divided hierarchically into series, groupings, and files.
Containers are anything that houses or stores archival materials. A container might be a standard size archival box, an oversize box, a broadside folder, or a media case.
Digital materials are born-digital and digitized materials that are available online.
Finding aids allow users to discover, understand, and access archival collections. Finding aids describe the creation, arrangement, content, and context of archival materials.
Name records are the people, families, and organizations that create archival materials. In Archives at Southern , users can view name records to see all of the collections created by a person, family, or organization.
Provenance is the information regarding the origins of an item or collection.
University Records are organized by record groups. Record groups are hierarchical divisions that are sometimes equivalent to provenance, representing all the records of an agency and its subordinate divisions. However, the records of a large agency may be broken into several record groups, treating the records of different divisions as separate collections rather than as a series.
Record Series are groups of similar records that are arranged according to a filing system and that are related as the result of being created, received, or used in the same activity.
Subject records are topics, places, and genres used to describe the context and content of archival materials. In Archives at Southern, users can view a subject record to see all of the collections relating to that topic, place, or genre.
Unprocessed Materials are groups of materials, physical or digital, that may not have been arranged, described, or rehoused for patron use. Some unprocessed materials may not be immediately available for patron access.