Accessing Janus catalogues

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Janus allows you to:

• browse catalogues by repository
• browse lists of terms (classified by subject, name and place) used to index the catalogues
• make a simple freetext search for a keyword or phrase
• make a more precise (advanced) search by combining keywords or phrases and/or narrowing a search to a particular part of the catalogue e.g. description or biographical history, or repository or date span

How do I browse catalogues?

1. Click on Browse catalogues in the left hand search box and you will see a list of repositories, which have contributed catalogues of their archives to Janus.
2. Click on a repository name to view a list of these catalogues. The list of catalogues will appear underneath the repository's details. Janus catalogues are constructed to a standard known as ISAD(G), which is the agreed international standard for archival description.
3. Click on the title of the catalogue you wish to view. The list of catalogues for your chosen repository will now appear on the left hand side, with your selected catalogue highlighted. The catalogue itself will appear on the right hand side.
4. Catalogues are displayed hierarchically on Janus, allowing you to browse from general information (such as a description of a whole collection) down to specific information (such as a description of a document or file of documents within a collection).
5. The bar running above the title allows you to navigate upwards in the catalogue, i.e. to return to more general information.
6. The links displayed down the left hand side of each catalogue let you navigate across to other records at the same level as the one displayed.
7. At the bottom of each catalogue you will see a link or links to further information, if it is available. These links will allow you to navigate down in the catalogue.
8. Beneath all the descriptive information displayed on screen there is a link for an ' expanded catalogue view suitable for printing'. Clicking on this will display the catalogue recursively, that is in reference number order, rather than by hierarchical level. All the entries on view will be full descriptions. You can return to the previous view which summarises descriptions at lower levels to the main entry by clicking on 'hierarchical catalogue view'.

Index browsing

You can browse Janus’s indexes of subjects, corporate, person and family names, and place names.

Choose one of the indexes below to start browsing:

Subject: Browse the subject terms associated with the catalogues. These are taken from a standard list known as the UNESCO thesaurus.

Corporate: Browse the index of organisations.

Person: Browse the index of personal names.

Family: Browse the index of family names.

Place: Browse the index of geographical locations associated with the catalogues. These are taken from a standard list known as the Getty geographical thesaurus.

To see the catalogue entries indexed with any of these terms, click on the term of interest from one of the above indexes. You will see brief catalogue entries and index entries returned as a list. Click on the reference number to view the full catalogue description.

Although many of the descriptions have been indexed, if you do not find what you are looking for, you are advised to try the freetext and advanced search, as well as the browse facilities.

What will a freetext search do?

Janus catalogues of archive collections are constructed to a standard known as ISAD(G), which is the agreed international standard for archival description. Every catalogue entry contains a number of fields, each of which carries specific information about the archives described (reference, title, dates, etc.) A freetext search allows you to find words from all these fields across every catalogue on Janus. This will therefore be slower than the more precise Advanced Search.

Some tips on searching are given here.

Advanced searching

Advanced searching will allow you to specify a keyword or phrase in one or more of the fields available from a drop-down menu in order to refine or limit your search. Searching with 'AND' will return results which match all of your search terms. For example, if you were interested in discovering the diaries of poets, you could search for 'poet' in Biography and 'diary' in Description.

Anything: Use this field to search across all elements of the catalogue.

Reference: Enter, if known, a reference number for a specific catalogue entry to retrieve it directly, e.g. CAV/2/3.

Description: Use this field to search for words within the title or description of a catalogue entry.

Subject: Use this to search the subject index terms associated with the catalogue.

Corporate Name: Use this to search for an organisation.

Personal Name: Use this to search for an individual.

Family Name: Use this to search for a family by name.

Place: Use this to search for a geographical location.

Biography: Use this field to search for words within the biographical or administrative history field of a catalogue entry.

Provenance: Use this to search for records created by a specific individual or entity.

Search Results

Search results are grouped so that information of the same kind is presented together, be it index terms, catalogue entries, repository details or definitions from the glossary of Cambridge-specific vocabulary.

Each catalogue entry match provides the title of the archive as a whole, followed if necessary by the title of more specific material within the archive. It may also provide an extract from part of the catalogue to show the exact context of a match – the search term(s) is highlighted in red – and hence its relevance. On the line below is a confirmation of where the search term(s) was found, e.g. in description, biography, subject.

Janus will search for terms which appear directly within a catalogue entry and for those which are inferred from a related catalogue entry at a higher level of description. The term ‘inferred’ will appear alongside the latter.

How do I look at the actual archives?

Janus does not include the text or images of the archives described here.

Each catalogue entry contains a link to details of the relevant repository. It can be found at the top of the page in the pale blue tool bar immediately above the title of the collection. Click on the name of the repository that immediately follows the string 'Home>Janus>Repositories>'. This will take you to information about the repository, e.g. opening hours (some repositories are open only two or three days a week), the policy on providing copies of records, the availability of a research service, and contact details.

If your query cannot be answered from the information provided, you will find a ‘contact the repository’ link which appears in a box at the bottom of the page on the left hand side for each record or collection shown. Please note that as some repositories are open only on certain days you may not receive an immediate response to your query.

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