To carry out a quick search simply type your search term into the search box in the top right hand corner and hit the search button. This will carry out a search for your term in the title, description and date fields of each record we have on our catalogue.

Advanced Search
You can also use the advanced search function to carry out a more detailed search using different and specific fields. These are:

Any Text: Use this to search all text (rather than numbers) in all fields in the catalogue. It is likely to retrieve the largest number of hits but is the most useful if it is not clear which of the other fields to use

Finding Number: Where you know a particular reference or finding number for the collection or document you are interested in this is the search box to use

Title: All catalogue records for collections or records have a title and typing a search term in this box allows a search of all or part of the text in the title field only. At collection level this is likely to contain details such as the name of a parish, town, school, charity, business or family. For example a search for `Lenham’ will retrieve all records with this word in the title including Lenham Parish, Lenham School, Lenham Hill Farm, Lenham High Street etc

Description: This is used in the catalogue record to expand on details in the Title field so many contain more names of places and people and also synopsis or part transcriptions of the record in question.

Date: Specific years or a range of years, e.g. 1530-1540 or 19th cent, can be entered in this search box.

Search results
The search results are presented as a hitlist. If they extend to more than one page click on Next and Previous to navigate through the pages.
Click on a record to see its full details. Here you can click on the reference in the FindingNo field to see the record in an outline (tree) view of the collection to which it belongs.

Viewing original documents
Make a note of the full details of any record of interest. In order to view any original documents, the most important detail is the Finding Number but the Title is also useful. Please see the FAQs for information on visiting the Kent History and Library Centre to view original documents.

Please note that some documents may be closed to public access for legal reasons or due to confidentiality issues so it is worth checking this before you visit.

If the catalogue entry only gives details of the collection and no other details are displayed, then the contents of the collection may not have been listed in detail. Please contact the Kent History and Library Centre to check whether there any further details and whether the collection can be accessed.