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How to use this website
How to use this website
This page explains how to search and use the Brisbane City Archives collections. Please read it before starting detailed research, especially if you are new to archives. Our collections are extensive, and this guide will help you find records more easily.
Quick Links
Guide to House Histories - click here if you simply need house history resources.
Understanding our physical collections
Guide to searching text-based documents like minutes
Understanding our Collections
The City Archives collections mainly comprise original hard copy records. Many of these items have been digitised to improve access.
Description of the material is on the Brisbane Libraries catalogue.
How to search for Archives records on the library catalogue
The City Archives holdings can be identified by ‘BCA’, which is the first three letters of the call and item number.
Go to the home page of the library catalogue.
1. Click on the drop-down arrow if you want to select a different type of search type, e.g. title or keyword, or click on ‘Advanced Search’ to the right of the search bar for more options (see Advanced Search Options below for further searching instructions).
2. Click in the white box and type in your search words, for example, "Milton tennis court". Although you can search for an item by the title or keyword, unless you know the exact title of the series you are searching for, a keyword search will give you the widest results.
3. It is recommended that you confine your search to City Archives, there are two options for this. One is by Item Type, which will only return archival files; and other is by Library, which will return everything, incorporating the reference library collection. Select the desired option and click Include.
Understanding your search results:
A list of items are provided: call number, title, author or creator of the series. Note: the title descriptions of the Archives series are detailed and include dates to provide clues to their content.
Catalogue Record:
The Catalogue Record includes a full description of the item. This includes an abstract description of the collection, physical size, any access restrictions and the Subject headings for the item. The record will also indicate whether an item has been digitised. In this case the item may be available on this website.
View series with the same subject - This feature retrieves a list of titles with subjects that are similar to those of the selected record.
How do I view an undigitised Archives Item?
When you have found a series that you are interested in viewing, note the title and Call Number (BCA) number and contact us by phone or email. If the item has been digitised, you may be able to access it via our online database using the title or BCA number.
If the Item has access restrictions, please contact City Archives first to clarify what restrictions are in place.
What does Restricted Access mean?
The Archives collection comprises public records that must be managed in accordance with the Public Record Act. Certain records held by the City Archives may be restricted for a period. In cases where a file in the City Archives holds some pages that are restricted this will be noted on the item record. This means the public can view the earlier material. Where the whole record is within the period of restriction, application to view the file can be made in consultation with the City Archivist. This may incur a delay in access to the file being granted.
Where can Archives material be viewed? Can I copy material?
Because of its unique and valuable nature, original archival material can only be viewed at the Archives with the assistance and supervision of staff who will retrieve material for you. Some particularly fragile or large bound material may have further restrictions placed upon copying or use for preservation reasons. In general, material in the archives collection may be copied, although staff will do the copying for you. Items may be photographed with a digital camera or phone, provided no copyright restrictions apply. In line with industry practice, we do not permit people to bring their own scanners in to scan material.
Publications
Council and Local Studies publications held by the City Archives appear on eLibCat as reference items located at the City Archives. Copies may also be available in Local Studies Collections in libraries. Some may also have been digitised and can be viewed online.
Digital holdings
Our online platform (this website) is a curated collection of our most requested records and images. It features a house history research guide and materials, historic maps and published Council minutes that can be searched.
Some images which featured on our previous platform have not yet been transitioned to the site. Should you be searching for an image that was previously available please contact us.
How to Search our Digital Collections
There are two methods of searching – a simple search or a defined search.
Simple Search
A simple search is just typing the search terms into the search bar on the front page and pressing Enter or clicking the magnifying glass button on the right of the search bar. It will return searches in order of relevance. You can filter the format by item type (for example, photos only) with the Format dropdown menu on the left. This search will also return results with the search terms inside documents like reports and minutes. We will discuss in-text search in more detail later in this guide.
Advanced Search
Advanced search can be accessed via the magnifying glass tile on the left side of the screen. On our platform, it is called a “defined search”.
This search allows for advanced control over search terms and is helpful when searching topics with a lot of information (for example, searching the minutes).
This search offers five refining options – Format, Within Data, Search Within Data, Date and Search For.
- Format: search for a particular item type(s), for example, only search the minutes.
- Within Data: enables the search to be modified to include the keyword within the title of the asset, all metadata fields, or all metadata fields plus content (eg the text of the minutes).
- Search Within Fields: this is not applicable to our collections.
- Date: search for items within a specific date range.
- Search For: enables a search to be refined or broadened depending on the selected option.
- All Keyword - returns results where all the keywords appear (e.g. Coronation AND Drive.)
- Any Keywords – returns results where any of the keywords appear (e.g. Coronation OR Drive)
- Exact Phrase Match – returns results where the keywords entered all appear in the order entered (e.g. Coronation Drive).
Understanding Search Results
The search page will appear after either of these search methods. Hits are highlighted in yellow.
Sorting
The search will rank results by relevancy, with best matches to the search terms highest in the results. These options can be changed in the Order By menu on the right side:
Fuzzy Search
Please note that the search is “fuzzy” – meaning that like a search engine, it will attempt to correct typos or find similar words or terms. For example, Queen St will pull up Queen Street and vice versa. This can be a little overzealous, and may do things like display results for "Alderley" along with "Annerley". It does not obey Boolean functions like AND, OR, NOT, please use Defined Search (above) or the Refine Search Terms button for this functionality, shown below:
View Result Format
The search results can be displayed as tiles or rows. Tiles are on by default. Tiles offer a larger preview thumbnail, rows offer more space to display metadata. The button is next to Order By on the right:
Filtering Results
Filters can be applied on search results, or on the Browse All option on the left side.
Format is the most useful option – allows to filter to item types, eg photo, video, minutes etc. The menu also offers the option to drill down further into the metadata by opening the subfilters. For example, if we wanted to see a file that had information about the Tropical Dome (the search term) and Botanic Gardens (a subject of an item) in general, there are 7 results available after selecting the subfilters:
Has the Following
Allows users to filter for items with OCR (searchable text) or geotags.
Within Data
Allows users to filter their search terms to:
- Titles Only – will only return items with search terms in titles
- All Fields – All metadata fields of item, including titles.
- All Fields + Content – All metadata and any searchable text (OCR) – this is the default for all searches.
Date
Allows filtering items in a date range. For a single day, enter the same date in both fields. If an item has a large date range (the detail plans for example run from 1911-1974) it will appear in many searches. You can filter unwanted items with large date ranges by applying other methods above.
Tip for long search sessions
Please note that the website does not automatically clear your filters. If you are doing multiple searches in a session, filters can stack on top of each other and give no search results. We recommend clicking the blue Clear All Filters button at the top or bottom of the sidebar after each search.
Searching our minutes, files, reports and publications
Many items in the collection are text-heavy, such as minutes, reports and publications. One of the features of our website is the ability to search within text-based documents. Let’s try to find the first mention of the Riverwalk in the Council Minutes.
You can apply this search either across the entire collection, or to a single item.
To get the best result, use the Exact Phrase Match option.
Below is an example of how to do an exact phrase search on the minutes, having filtered the format to Minutes.
When opening a searchable item, the website will place your search terms into the text search box and find the first instance of the text automatically (please allow the item to load) – example of result below:
Tips for understanding how this website is organised
Suburbs, Streets and Neighbourhoods
Our collection is primarily sorted geographically and we encourage you to search this way. Items relevant to a particular location are collected in their hubs.
Here is the Suburb hub for the CBD - Brisbane City - on the page, you can see items grouped by type, (photo, plans, video etc).
If an item can be tied to its relevant street in Brisbane, it will appear in the Street hub. For example, here is everything that appears in Vulture Street, West End. For very long streets that span multiple suburbs, they are broken up into their suburban sections. For example, Coronation Drive has a separate page for Milton, Auchenflower and Toowong.
Please note: suburb boundaries have changed many times, and the items are labelled as of their present day location. For example, Sunnybank used to encompass four or more of its surrounding present day suburbs. A file may mention a street that was then in Sunnybank, but the present day location may be in MacGregor. If this is the case, the Archives team will index it to MacGregor.
A Street hub will only be generated if there is content for the street in question. If there is no Street hub for your desired street, you may find items of interest in your Suburb hub. We are constantly adding more content - if there is a suburb of interest, some users bookmark the suburb page and check back at a later date for new content.
Neighbourhoods are a special case - these are informal locations as designated by the Queensland Place Names Board. For example, Rosalie is not a suburb, but is generally recognised by the community as a distinct place. Neighbourhoods are in the system as a way of enabling people to search these areas. Other examples include Ekibin, St John's Wood, South Bank, Buranda etc. As there are no formal boundaries, Archives staff make a judgement on if an item should be indexed to a Neighbourhood on an ad-hoc basis.
Landmark and Park hubs
A Landmark in this system is any notable monument, building, bridge, or establishment in Brisbane we have material for. For example, here is the Landmark hub for City Hall. This follows the same concept, and pulls together material about a particular place. Parks serve as similar location hubs to Landmarks, like Streets, Parks will only appear if there is content available for it.
What is a Collection?
A Collection is an item hub that isn't linked to a particular location, and based on topic. For example, here is our Collection on cemeteries.
Map search
Using the map search you can easily browse identified locations. Each pin colour represents a different item type. You can use the pane to filter item type. (Searching by title is possible, but simply browsing the map is often more fun and effective.) A map pin will only be added if the item can be narrowed down to a reasonably precise location. For items that are in an unknown or ambiguous location, see this collection and contact us if you can assist in geo-locating the item.
Interface guide
When selecting any plan, photo or piece of ephemera, the buttons on the left of the image contain very useful tools.
The buttons highlighted in red under #1 are used to manipulate the image – mostly resizing, rotation and fitting to your screen. These do NOT load a higher resolution image of the item – the website loads a smaller copy to save on user bandwidth.
Button #2 in blue below it will load a high resolution image. It is essential if you wish to view the finer details of an item like a plan or the background of a photo. Using your scrollwheel, or pinching your screen if on a mobile device, will not load a higher resolution. You must press this button to load a high resolution image with fine detail.
Button #3 in purple is the download button. You will be presented with two options, either “download the original”, or “download the web master”. We recommend downloading the original in all cases as it has the best quality. The web master is the lower resolution image the page initially loads to save bandwidth.
Button #4 in orange generates a citation similar to Chicago-style referencing. You may need to adapt it to your referred citation style.
The panels labelled #5 in green is the metadata – details about the item. Each hyperlinked line of text will link to similar items. For example, clicking on Milton will take you to a page that collects everything relevant to Milton. This is a great way to navigate the website as it allows you to organically explore – it’s like browsing Wikipedia.