Basic Search - Overview
In the Basic Search you can search for terms either in the General Index or the Fulltext of the documents.
The General Index is a combined index comprising four individual indices
- Persons / Names
- Institutions / Organizations
- Subjects
- Geographical index
When conducting a search in the General index, the search term(s) are compared to the terms in the four individual indices and the documents containing the entered search term(s) are listed as hits.
The terms that you search for in the general index do not always appear in exactly the same way in the documents found. For instance, Goebbels might appear in a text, whereby the index is more specific with Goebbels, Joseph.
The case is different in a Fulltext search: The entered search term(s) are searched for directly in the text of the document. The search results are documents that contain the search term exactly as entered. The search key is highlighted in colour in the documents found. Please take note that the fulltext search in the digitized original sources is dependent on the quality of the originals and a perfect result cannot be guaranteed. In the Advanced Search you have a Fuzzy Search option available that enables an inexact search, i.e. it finds entries that are only similar to the search term.
Please bear in mind that a search through the General Index and a Fulltext search with words such as Hitler or NSDAP will result in a very large number of results. In this case it is advisable to resort to the individual search fields in the Advanced Search, to combine search terms or to enter more specific search enquiries.