DC Memory operates on Rescarta, an open-source software. Rescarta's searching capabilities have a few quirks you need to be aware of when you are trying to find something specific in DC Memory.
Simple Search Tab will bring up a search box where you can type a term, and defaults to "all fields," meaning it will search the content/text of the documents for that term, plus title, abstract, subject, genre, and all the metadata fields that describe the documents.
DATE: You can narrow the search by date: click on "search by date" and then you can enter a date range you want the search feature to limit itself to.
ADD A BOX: If you click on the "plus" sign, a second search box will appear, allowing you to use Boolean logic to search for more than one term at a time.
LIMIT TO A PARTICULAR SUBCOLLECTION: There is a "search in collections" box on the right side. The system defaults to "all" categories in DC Memory, but you can change that. Click on the "all" box and all the checkmarks will go away. You can then check individual/multiple categories you want the search limited to.
If you would like to browse DC Memory, this is how the documents are organized:
ACADEMICS has course catalogs, Commencement programs, and Winter Term documents
ADMINISTRATION has documents on DC history, and photos of past Presidents
ALUMNI has photos and brochures from Homecomings of the past, alumni newsletters and magazines, and a student directory listing alumni who graduated between 1888-1980
ATHLETICS has photos and print documents about sports on campus
EVENTS AND LECTURES has photos of celebrities who have visited campus, including the visit of sitting U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower to campus in 1953, and also his return to campus in 1963 to give the Commencement address.
FACILITIES offers photos of current and historic DC buildings and grounds
LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS AND OHIO HISTORY has documents that local organizations have granted us permission to put on DC Memory, such as Fort Defiance Players' theater programs, photos of the building of the power dam on the Auglaize River in 1911/12, and Hermann Wiebe's oil paintings of all 88 Ohio county courthouses
MAGAZINES, NEWSPAPERS AND YEARBOOKS is self-explanatory; this is where the student newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and Oraculum yearbooks are found
MCMASTER SCHOOL FOR ADVANCING HUMANITY has several issues of the School's journal
SCHAUFFLER COLLEGE ARCHIVES is where materials from Schauffler College, which closed in Cleveland in the 1950s and whose assets were given to Defiance College, are compiled. It includes photographs, yearbooks, magazines published by Schauffler, and tracts on Schauffler students' work with immigrants
STUDENT LIFE has student scrapbooks, student handbooks, band/choir/theater programs, photos of activities like May Day and Spring Week, and student organizations like BASA, Greek organizations, and the campus radio station
We run OCR on all text documents that go into DC Memory, but there may be cases where the OCR does not pick up certain text. If a yearbook has cursive text or artistic fonts, the OCR may not retrieve the word.
For example, someone searching for information on Sandy Parker, a student from Liberia in the 1950s, typing "Parker" in the simple search tab will not retrieve this memorial page for him in the 1957 yearbook: http://goo.gl/9MndyQ His name is printed on that page in vertical text, which the OCR did not read.
Another example where OCR fails: this page from the 1974 yearbook http://goo.gl/zVhUlD will not be retrieved if you searched on "express yourself" because of the hand-drawn, non-standard lettering.
Lesson: Start with the simple search tab. But if simple search says it can't find your term, don't assume that simple search was 100% thorough. You may have to figure out other ways to search, possibly document by document. Contact the library staff if you need help: http://library.defiance.edu/aboutpilgrimlibrary