Technical Note

Selected Sample Searches

Those interested in simply browsing through the database may wish to try some of the following specific searches, using the search form or clicking on the links below:

Author Searches:  John Jay, George Washington,  John Adams,  James Monroe,  Charles II, Louis XVI,  Lafayette,  Benjamin Franklin,  Patrick Henry,  Gouverneur Morris,  Abigail Adams, Benjamin Rush

Recipient Searches:  Sarah Livingston Jay,  Congress,  Supervisor of Albany County, Noah Webster

Keyword Searches: pirates, slavery, smallpox, jacobin, episcopal

Repository Searches:  Columbia University, New-York Historical Society, United States Library of Congress, New York Public Library

Date Searches:  1776 - July,   1781 - September

In addition, the accompanying background essays include many clickable links to specific documents in the database.

Search Tips

• All words entered into the search form are combined into a single Boolean "and" search.  This allows you to search, for instance, for all items written by John Jay during a particular day, month & year or on a particular topic.  Make sure to 'clear' the form, however, before beginning a new search; otherwise previous search terms may still be present and taken into account.
  
  
• Searching is case insensitive, so you don't have to worry about keying upper or lower case. For example, the following searches all retrieve the same results:
  
      Peter Jay
      peter jay
      Peter jay
  
  
• Searching is word-order insensitive, so you don't have to enter names in any particular order. For example, the following searches all retrieve the same results:
  
      Deane, Silas
      Silas Deane
  
  
• Searches are automatically truncated, so that they match all words beginning with the search string keyed. For example, the following searches will all retrieve the record in which "Shawengunk Mountains" is mentioned.
  
      Shawengunk Mountains
      Shawengunk
      Shawen
  
  
• Search elements entered in different boxes in the search form are all considered a single keyword Boolean "and" search.  Before doing a new search, make sure to Clear the form of all previous input.

Author / Recipient Search

• Use the Author or Recipient search to find documents from or to a particular person.  If you wish to search for all documents both to and from a particular person with a single search, use the Keyword search box (see also Keyword Search below).
  
  
• Names in the Author & Recipient fields are not always consistent in their form.   (Perhaps most significantly, "John Jay" sometimes appears in the name and keyword data as "JJ".)  For this reason it is important always to search under name variants when known and/or a truncated form of the name, e.g.,  
  
      JJ
  as well as
     John Jay
  
  
     Greene, Nathanael
  as well as
     Greene, Nathaniel
  or
     Greene, Nath  [which will match any variation occurring after that string]
  
  
     Grenville
  instead of
     Grenville, Lord
  
  
  
• Personal names are sometimes abbreviated, though not consistently, e.g., "Wm." for "William," "Corn'l" for "Cornelius," "Jno" for "Jonathan," "Nich." for "Nicholas," "Geo." for "George."  
  
     William Jay
  as well as
     Wm. Jay
  
  
     Van Dyck, Cornelius
  as well as
     Van Dyck, Corn   [which also retrieves the spelling "Van Dyck, Corn'l"]
  
  

Keyword Search

• Keyword searches include the abstract field as well as author and recipient fields.  If you wish to retrieve all items to and from a particular individual with a single search, a keyword search will accomplish this and, at the same time, find all abstracts mentioning the name.

Repository Search

• The repository search is done from a drop-down menu that displays the names of the institutions holding Jay materials cataloged in the database.   While the database is under construction, some repository searches may temporarily result in a "no hits" response.
  
  
• Displayed along with the repository name, is the corresponding institutional code from the Library of Congress's MARC Code List for Organizations.

Date Search

     [to come]

Jay ID Number Search

     The Jay ID Number is a unique and persistent number assigned by the Papers of John Jay project to individual documents to allow them to be retrieved individually after they have been identified, for example, through previous searches.   For instance, Jay ID #345 is for:

Abstract for: [Document, 1788 May 13], 1 p.
Author(s): Jay, John
Recipient(s): Griffin, Cyrus
Repository: United States National Archives, Records and Services (DNA )

The URL format for linking to individual Jay Papers is:

     http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/cul/jaypapers/jp?mode=item&key=columbia.jay.00345

where the last element is the the Jay ID number front-padded with zeros to 5 digits.

Display Options

     [to come]

Default Sort

Number of Items to Display

     [to come]