Help All Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

1. What is the Portal?
2. What is in the Portal?
3. Why did I get an error message?
4. How do I report a technical problem?
5. Whom can I contact if I notice a mistake or have additional information about an item?
6. How do I become a Partner?
7. Can you tell me the value of an item in my collection?

Accessibility

1. How can I get captions for video or audio clips?

For Genealogists

1. How do I find census records?
2. Can I search using Soundex?
3. Do you index names?

Citations

1. What citation format do you use?

Searching

1. When I enter a keyword in Basic Search, what is being searched?
2. OCR: what is it and how does it affect my search?
3. How can I view extracted text (OCR)?
4. How do I use Guided Search?
5. How do I clear a search dialog box?
6. I searched for a specific magazine or newspaper; why did I get so many unrelated items?
7. How do I search for variations of a word?
8. Why didn't my search results include plurals?
9. Can I search within a search results list?
10. Can I save a list of search results?

Exploring

1. How is Exploring different from Searching?
2. Can I search within an Explore grouping?
3. Why do the time periods in Explore Dates overlap?
4. What is a Curated Title?

Selecting and Interacting With Items

1. How do I locate pages that contain my search keywords?
2. How do I view the pages of a book?
3. How do I rotate pages or images?

Usage Statistics

1. Do you collect data for reporting on collection use?
2. Where can I find the "statistics" pages?
3. How do you define "use"?
4. How is a use different from a hit or visit?
5. Can you tell what country users are coming from?

Saving / Printing / E-mailing

1. Do you have persistent links to items?
2. How do I bookmark an item?
3. How do I save an item record or image?
4. Can I download audio and video files?
5. How do I download an entire book or document?
6. How can I copy and paste text?
7. How do I print an item record or image?
8. How do I print multiple text pages at once?
9. Can I "zoom in" on a portion of an item and then print or save just that portion?
10. What is permalinking?
11. How do I e-mail an item record or image?
12. Can I e-mail a list of search results?
13. Do you offer RSS?

Programmatic Access

1. Do you have any APIs for your system?
2. Do your APIs require a login or access key?
3. Are the records available via OAI-PMH?

About the KXAS-NBC5 News Collection

1. Why is the sound missing from some of the news clips?
2. Do I need permission to use a news clip?
3. Is the entire KXAS-NBC5 archive available online?
4. Can I view materials that have not yet been digitally reformatted?

About Newspapers

1. Do you have a list of all the newspaper titles in the Texas Digital Newspaper Program (TDNP) collection?
2. How do I find Texas newspapers by county?
3. How do I find Texas newspapers by city?
4. How do I tell what dates you have for a newspaper?
5. How can I make the newspaper text larger and easier to read?
6. Can I turn keyword highlights on or off?
7. How can I cut and save a particular newspaper article?
8. You provide a citation for the whole newspaper issue, but can I get a citation for a particular article or page within that issue?
9. How can I find obituaries?
10. How can I contact The ECHO newspaper?