Harvard University Library Open Collections Program: Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930 Open Collections Program Harvard University Library Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930 Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930

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Help

This page is provided to assist in the navigation of this web site. If you have further questions about the site or its contents, please contact us at ocpadm@hulmail.harvard.edu for assistance.

Finding Digitized Materials

In most cases, access to digitized materials is provided through a link in the item's library catalog record.


In either case, clicking on "Display Full Record" will present you will the full catalog record for the object.

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Browsing vs. Searching

There are two ways of finding books and manuscripts on the Immigration to the US site: browsing and searching.

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Browsing

"Browse Topics" will provide access to all Immigration to the US books and manuscripts by topic heading. Clicking on one of these topic headings will return a list of book, manuscript, and image titles with links to each object.

Clicking on "Browse Books and Pamphlets" will display a list of all of the books and pamphlets in the collection, sorted by title. Each title on the list links directly to the digital item. This list can also be sorted by author or by date by clicking on the respective links.


Browsing the "People," "Organizations," or "Dates and Events" sections will provide access to select portions of Immigration to the US books and manuscripts. These areas provide descriptive context and access to some of the digitized materials.

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Searching

There are two kinds of searching available on the Immigration to the US site.

  1. "Search Books, Manuscripts, Images" allows you to search for a particular term or phrase within the bibliographic information (the information found in the HOLLIS or VIA catalog record that describes a given object).



    Choose "Books, Manuscripts, Images" for finding:

    • A specific item by title, author, creator, or publisher
    • Works about general subjects
    • Works whose central theme is about a person, place, or event

    Searches on this page will return a list of book, manuscript, and image titles. Each title on the list is linked to the associated bibliographic information. The bibliographic information provides links to page images for the book or manuscript.

    TIPS

    • Keep search terms short, such as the author's last name or a single heading
    • You can limit the number of search results that you get by searching on two terms and separating them with and—for example, textile and abbott

  2. "Search Full Text" allows you to search for a particular term or phrase in the full text (the transcribed text of the entire book) of ALL of the books and pamphlets in Immigration to the US. Most manuscripts and handwritten materials will not have full text available.



    To search the full text of a single book, click on the "Search" button in the top right-hand corner of the screen when you are viewing that book in the Page Delivery Service.

    Choose a "Full Text" search for finding:

    • Concepts or ideas not defined by one subject term
    • A person, place, or event that is not central to the main theme
    • Very specific topics

    Searches on this page will return a list of links to pages that contain the text you searched for, sorted by relevancy. (Note that more than one chapter from the same book might appear on the list.)

    TIPS

    Search terms may be combined using the following operators: and; or; not; near

    The default operator is and, so the following two queries produce identical results: harvard yard and harvard and yard. They will only match documents that contain both of the terms harvard and yard.

    The and operator will match terms that occur anywhere in a document. To search for a phrase, enclose it in "quotation marks" like this: "harvard yard". This search which will only match documents containing the phrase harvard yard.

    The near operator will match terms that are within 100 words of each other, regardless of their order.

    3. More tips on full-text searching.

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Viewing and Navigating a Text

When you click on the hyperlink to view a digital book, a separate window will open, taking you into the Page Delivery Service. For more information on viewing, navigating, and printing from this application, please see PDS Help.

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Downloading and Printing Digitized Materials

To download a single image in Microsoft Internet Explorer, select "Save As" from the File menu to save the page as an HTML web page. In Netscape Navigator, select "Save Image As" from the File menu. To print pages of a digitized document from the Page Delivery Service, select the "Printable Version" link located in the red menu across the top of the page. This will give you the option of creating a printable PDF version of the page, of a specified page sequence, or of the entire document.

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"Page Delivery Service" Blank Page

If you have clicked on a link to view an item and you get a Harvard Page Delivery Service page, but you don't see anything, it's likely that you are at an institution that has the Internet port 8080 blocked. This port allows large files to transfer more quickly, and some organizations block this port to prevent the access of large Internet files via their systems. Ask your systems administrator if port 8080 is blocked, and whether they will enable it. If not, try accessing the same files from a home Internet connection.

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Prompted to Log In to Access a Text

In some cases, catalog records describing some of the published texts in the Immigration to the US collection contain links to more than one electronic version of a work. If you click on a link to access a text and are prompted to log in to the Harvard University Pin Authentication system:



please go back to your search results set and click "Display Full Record":



Try each of the links in the record. One of them will be for a resource fully available to the general public.



We apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for your patience while we work to improve our systems.

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Searching Multiple Collections Simultaneously

If you are trying to display search results in two collections from a single browser session, you will receive an error message. To search two or more collections simultaneously, please be sure to initiate your second browser window from your desktop icon or "programs" menu.

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