Archives Search Help

Quick Guide to The Oklahoman Archives

The Oklahoman Archives contains more than 2.2 million pages in over 37,000 issues spanning September 25, 1901, to present. Issues prior to September 2001 were converted from microfilm. More recent issues are full-color. The contents of all issues are fully text searchable and reflect the full context and layout of each page. (Search Tips)

Remember when searching the archives that The Oklahoman is a morning newspaper. That means coverage of events most often will be in the newspaper the morning after the event occurred. For instance, if you want to browse the newspaper for first-day coverage of the Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963, you should start in the November 23, 1963, issue.

CONTENTS: Tab Bar | Home Page | Search | Search Tips | Issue | Last Search Results

NOTE: This site is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer Versions 5.5 and 6 for Microsoft Windows at high levels. Low levels work best with IE 5 and Netscape 4.7 and higher.

Tab Bar Use the Tab Bar to navigate The Oklahoman Archives

Home Page	This is the starting page for The Oklahoman Archives. From the archive home page, you will select published issues stored in the archive. Once you have clicked an appropriate date in the calendar, the Issue page opens with the selected issue.
Search Page	Search for articles stored in The Oklahoman Archives. In the search page you can specify the search terms, publications, scope, content, and how you want the results sorted.
Previously Viewed Issue	When you click the Issue tab, the most recently viewed issue appears in the Issue page. The Issue page will appear when you select an issue from the Home page, or when you click the Show Full Page icon in the search results.
Previous Search	Opens the Last Search Results page with the results of a previous search. You must have run a search to see this page.

Home Page Opens when you open The Oklahoman Archives, or when you click the Home tab. Select an issue directly from the archive.

Select Publication	In the drop menu, select the publication that you are interested in viewing. Your options are The Oklahoman or Real Estate, which is published each Saturday.
Select Year and Month	In the drop menus, select the year and month of the issue.
Select Date	The calendar displayed corresponds to the selected year and month (above). In the calendar, dates are highlighted according to the issues available. To access a specific issue, go to the calendar and click the date highlighted in white.
Note: Depending on your browser version, you may see an alternative Home Page with a drop menu to select dates instead of the calendar.

Search Opens when you click the Search tab. Search for a term in the newspaper. A separate Search Tips section is available that describes basic and advanced search features in The Oklahoman Archives.

Search Term	In the text box, type the search terms that you are searching for, along with any search modifiers.
Select Publication	Select the publication that you want to search.
All Publications	Select the check box to search all the publications in The Oklahoman Archives.
Select Scope	You have the option of selecting one of three scopes: Archive Period – you may select any one of the archive periods. By holding the CTRL key, you may select multiple periods. The Default archive period is January 2003 to current issue. Date Range - set a beginning and ending date for your search. When you select Date Range, two links appear: From: Select To: Select Click the first link to open a calendar to set the beginning date of the date range. Enter the year. Select the month. Click the start date. Click the second link to open a calendar to set the ending date of the date range. Enter the year. Select the month. Click the start date. (Depending on your browser, you may be required to enter date range information via text box and drop box, in the place of the above calendars.) Entire Archive - set the entire archive of issues to search
Select Content	Select one of the options to indicate the content that you want to search: All, Articles, Pictures, Ads. The Oklahoman Archives allow you to search picture captions and text in display advertising.
Sort Results	Select from the drop box how you want the results sorted: Score – relevance of your search based on the occurrence of search terms Title Word Count Date Ascending Date Descending Section – older issues are not segmented by section Publication
Go	Initiate a search according to your specifications.

Search Tips

Phrase Searching Capitalization Using <and> Connector

Using <or> Connector Parentheses Automatic Plurals

Automatic Stemming Using <word> Modifier Wildcards

Using <near> Connector
Using <sentence> Connector

Phrase Searching

The Oklahoman Archives offer basic and advanced searching. The most common search is for a name or phrase. To do this, be sure to put your search words in quotation marks. Quotation marks around words indicate you want to retrieve documents in which the exact phrase appears.

Examples:
"central high school"
"aerospace industry"
"Sooner football"

Each of these searches would return only documents in which the exact phrase appears.

Capitalization

Including a capitalized word in the search automatically restricts the search to match only words that are capitalized. For instance, "Oklahoma Publishing Company" would return only results with the proper name, not generic references to an "Oklahoma publishing company."

Note: This feature does not work if you use wildcards as part of the search. (See Wildcards below.)

Using <and> Connector

Entering words without quotation marks is the same as entering the words separated by the connector <and>. It returns results where the words appear anywhere in an article. However, both words must appear in the same article.

Example: computers <and> laptops
Returns only documents that contain both the words “computers” and “laptops”.

Note: You also may use <and> to combine phrases or words and phrases to narrow a topic search.

Examples:
“Bud Wilkinson” <and> Oklahoma football
This would search for the words Bud and Wilkinson next to each other in the same article with the words Oklahoma and football anywhere in the article.

“Bud Wilkinson” <and> “Oklahoma football”
This restricts the results to just those articles that include both phrases.

Note: The difference in results can be dramatic. For instance, if you restrict your search to the Archive Period: From 1941 To 1950, the first search would return 538 articles. The second search, with the phrase “Oklahoma football,” would return only 78 articles.

Using <or> Connector

Unlike <and>, which restricts the results to articles in which both words or phrases must be present, <or> retrieves documents in which one or both of the words or phrases appear.

Example: computers <or> laptops
Returns documents which contain “computers” or “laptops,” or both “computers” and “laptops,” but it does not rank documents that contain both terms higher. The <or> connector may be used with words and phrases to expand the search.

Example: “Bud Wilkinson” <or> “Barry Switzer”
This returns articles in which either, or both, names appear.

Parentheses

You can use parentheses with all connectors or search modifiers to better define the search.

Examples:
(“Bud Wilkinson” <or> “Barry Switzer”) <and> championships
This returns articles in which either, or both, names appear, and the word championship also appears.

“Bud Wilkinson” <or> (“Barry Switzer” <and> championships)
This search returns a quite different result. It would return all articles in which the name Bud Wilkinson appears, along with all articles in which both the name Barry Switzer and the word championships appear.

Automatic Plurals

The Oklahoman Archives is set up to automatically search for singular and plural forms of the search term entered.

Example: computer <or> laptop
Automatically searches for computer or computers, laptop or laptops.

Automatic Stemming

The system automatically expands the search to include the word entered plus its linguistic variations.

Example: film
Returns documents that include words such as films, filmed and filming.

Using <word> Modifier

To override the automatic stemming, precede the search term with the <word> modifier. This will restrict the search to the exact word entered.

Example: <word> film

The word film must appear in the document at least once. Linguistic variations will not be treated as search words.

Wildcards

Wildcards are used to matches characters included in the search. This gives you the ability to define the root word instead of relying on the automatic stemming. The * is used to represent zero to an unlimited number alternate characters.

Example: car*
Returns documents that include words such as car, cars, carriage and cartridge, any word that begins with the letters car.

The ? is used to indicate a single character. More than one ? may be used if more than one wildcard character is to be indicated.

Example: car?
Returns documents that include words such as cars or card, but not carriage and cartridge.

Using <near> Connector

The proximity operator is <near> and is used with a number indicating how many words apart the terms may be.

Example: Oklahoma <near/2> publishing
Would find all documents with those two terms appearing no more than two words apart in any order.

Note: You may combine search terms and modifiers with parentheses to construct a more advanced search.

Example: ("Oklahoma publishing") <or> (Oklahoma <near/2> broadcasting).
Would find all documents that contained the phrase Oklahoma publishing or those with the words Oklahoma and broadcasting within two words of one another.

Using <sentence> Connector

The <sentence> command selects documents that include all of the specified words within a single sentence.

Example: American <sentence> innovation
Returns documents that contain American and innovation within the same sentence.

Issue Opens when you: Select an issue from under the Home tab. Click the Show Full Page icon in the search results. Click the Issue tab in the tab bar. (If you have previously done one of the above operations.) Allows you to read an issue stored in the archives. In an open page of the newspaper, click an article title or an ad to display in the Article window.

Toolbar	Access useful tools provided by The Oklahoman Archives.
Main Page	Depending on your preference settings, the full page of the publication is displayed below the toolbar.
Previous	Click the Previous icon to jump to the Previous page in the issue.
Next	Click the Next icon to jump to the Next page in the issue.

Issue	Indicates the date of the issue currently being viewed.
Section Index	Select the section that you wish to view, such as Sports or Business. The first page of that section will appear. Older issues are not broken into sections.
Page Size (menu)	Select the page size for the issue that you are currently viewing. You can select five sizes (Smallest to Largest).
More Features	Use the Features menu to select one of the following options: MyCollection - view articles, pictures and ads that you have saved in your personal collection. Preferences - define your personal display settings. Next Issue - go to the next day’s newspaper Previous Issue - go to the previous day’s newspaper Help - view this page About ActivePaper - view version information and other details about the ActivePaper software, which is the software that runs The Oklahoman Archives
Page Selection	Click the buttons to jump to the previous or next page. In the page number text box, type the number of the page that you wish to view and press Enter on your keyboard.
Increase Page Size	Click the increase page size icon to increase the size of the page.
Decrease Page Size	Click the decrease page size icon to reduce the size of the page.

Last Search Results Opens when you click the Last Search Results tab. Displays a list of articles in the newspaper according to the search terms and settings that you specified in the page under the search tab. Click article titles to open articles in the article window.

Article Title	Headline of the article containing the search terms that you specified in the page under the search tab. Clicking the article title opens the Article window.
Publication Name	Name of the publication of the article that contains the search terms that you specified in the page under the search tab. DOK is an abbreviation for The Daily Oklahoman.
Issue Date	The publication date of the issue containing the found article
Article Details	The number of words in the article, the byline, the number of pages, and in what section of the publication the article is found.
Articles Found/Displayed	The number of articles found by your search, and the number of articles being displayed on this page.

Preview	Click the Preview icon to open a box displaying initial lines of text from the article.
Open	Open the article in an article window.
Full Page	Open the newspaper to the page where the article is located, with the article selected.
Add To	Adds the article to MyCollection and opens the MyCollection window.

Article

Article	Select this to see additional options when viewing the article. Add to MyCollection allows you to add the article to your collection for later viewing Send by e-mail allows you to e-mail the article contents to yourself or anyone else with an e-mail address Print – send the article to your printer. When printing from the older microfilm images, you may have to adjust your Print Properties to reduce (scale) the image to fit onto the paper. Show Full Page – opens the page on which the article appeared so you can see the context in which it was published.
View	This option lets you switch between text view of the article (Quick View) and Newspaper View, which displays the article with headline and graphics as it was published. The Quick View is not available for the microfilmed issues.
Jump	The red arrow is apparent when your search term appears more than once in the article. Clicking on the arrow will take you to the next occurrence of your search term.

NOTE: This site is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer Versions 5.0 and 6 for Microsoft Windows at high levels; and IE 5 and Netscape 4.7 and higher for lower levels. Depending on your Internet browser and operating system, there may be a slight difference in how you view and access your newspaper. Those features that might be affected are marked on this help page with the Internet Explorer icon and a short explanation.